Re: Stats from Saturday : Tue Aug 09, 2011 6:16 pm  

FearTheVee wrote:

The stat I'm worried about is: Played Wigan/Wire/Huddersfield 6(?) times, won zilch. Potter would have been lynched in the town hall square for that.

Given the staff he had at his disposal, rightly so. Although of course even the mighty Potter couldn't coach the team into winning a Grand Final. Or even getting to a Challenge Cup final. We did sneak into second place last year though, by two points on the last game so I suppose he was wonderful.

If anybody saw the pre-match build up for the wigan game, the difference between the coaches was marked. Maguire was very positive and confident in everything he said, Royce said he was nervous (which he was as he spent the next 80 minutes on TV biting his nails).

Royce said that he asked the young guys if they were nervous and he said to them that he was too, which is totally different to what you have just said. According to Twitter, Royce was shaking the hands of fans at the match, unlike his opposition coach. But I don't know whether that was beforehand or afterwards, as the tweet didn't specify that bit.

Jury very much out for me - I think he has "assistant coach" stamped all over him. Hope I'm proved wrong.

I think you were of that mindset from the outset though. I'll ask him about his interchanges at the fans forum tomorrow night. I'm sure he will have the courage to turn up following our latest defeat to Wigan (which incidentally was not his fault - he didn't drop the ball, miss tackles, be the invisible number 6 or play too laterally).

Re: Stats from Saturday : Tue Aug 09, 2011 6:26 pm  

inside_man wrote:

I'll be honest, I rated Potter at Saints.

That's probably because we still had Cunningham (a seriously influential presence in our team) and Gidley (with Longy still around in the first season). Pryce was playing for most of the time Potter was here and Eastmond too. Look at what we have had to play with for the whole of this season and yet we are in third spot today.

I think the only reason you've been able to cope with the amount of injuries you've had this year (again) was because of the work Potter put in with your kids.

The only young players to have regular first team spots under Potter were Foster and Dixon. Everybody else had bit parts (some hardly featured). Makinson (our present right wing) had yet to make his debut, as indeed had a number of u20s players who have played for us this season. This Potter did great with the youth mantra is seriously over done.

Potter had an ideal chance to utilise Gaskell and Lomax as Simmons has done as we were without halfbacks for the final third of the season last year, but he went with Moore and Wilkin instead, giving Gaskell all of 1.5 games.

He's doing really well with Bradford.

Re: Stats from Saturday : Tue Aug 09, 2011 7:04 pm  

Pryce was not fit enough for 80 mins of RL at that intesity and pace.
Two or three games back he should have either not played him or interchanged with Gaskell in both halves. Wigan have Hock back with 3 or 4 games and he wasn't in the 17 for those very same reasons.
Under Mcguire Wigan have faced Saints seven times. Wigan have won 5, drawn one and lost one. Maybe it's more about Wigan's coach than Potter or Simmons.

Re: Stats from Saturday : Tue Aug 09, 2011 7:05 pm  

I can't see anybody mentioning this but a really telling stat from Saturday was that we managed three offloads during the game and they were all from Wilkin who is not really an offloading master. We have turned into Hull KR but with better players.

It's okay praising our ball retention but it didn't lead to anything. In most Super League games ball retention leads to a win, however when you're eating at the top table you need more than that especially when you're playing against a defence that can soak up forward runs down the middle.

Re: Stats from Saturday : Tue Aug 09, 2011 8:07 pm  

McClennan wrote:

It's okay praising our ball retention but it didn't lead to anything.

Who is praising our ball retention? Our ball retention was shocking.

Re: Stats from Saturday : Tue Aug 09, 2011 8:10 pm  

SaintsFan wrote:

Who is praising our ball retention? Our ball retention was shocking.

It wasn't. We made some errors, but we pretty much completed most of our sets.

Re: Stats from Saturday : Tue Aug 09, 2011 8:24 pm  

Blobbynator wrote:

It wasn't. We made some errors, but we pretty much completed most of our sets.

There were a minimum of eight. I might have forgotten some. Knocking on eight times, not under pressure either, is no way to win any game much less a knock-out match, especially when at least three of those knock-ons happened in attack on their line.

Re: Stats from Saturday : Wed Aug 10, 2011 2:03 am  

Saints make all those meters but just don't do enough when they get there.

I also think Wigan share the workload better than saints do.

I said at the game that Roby and Puletua were your best players. Both of them are awesome.

I don't rate Wilking but 50 tackles is fantastic.

Re: Stats from Saturday : Wed Aug 10, 2011 6:46 am  

LovesToSpooge wrote:

Let's be honest a hell of a lot of eye brows were raised when you found Royce. His career to date hadn't been impressive. How he got the job still mystifies me. Surely there most have been better applicants apply than him. I always remember my father telling me never to trust anyone with hooded eyes like Simmons has, OT and random I know.

As for Pryce, there a couple of times when the Wigan defensive line opened up in front of him. Yet when he tried to step through and pick up speed, he looked to have nothing. Obviously you'll have seen him a lot more than I have, has his groin injury taken away his speed and quick feet? Or is it just a case of being underdone and not truly match fit as some have suggested?

As for Wellens, your going down the exact same route we did, and Leeds are at present, being sentimental when it comes to ageing players. He's finished IMO, yet Saints don't have the ball's to say no, and it's clearly hurting the team. You'd think clubs would learn by looking at the mistakes that other clubs have made. Yet amazingly they don't, and the same mistakes are made over and over again.

We had a very slow start to the season, which could be attributed to a number of things. I was personally tearing my hair out and we we lost to Quins at home I threw my toys firmly out of the pram! Since then we have improved immensly, though, and the rugby's been enjoyable to watch.
We seem nervous when we play Wigan. The fact that we had all that possesion early on without scoring, only to manage two slick tries when it looked as though the game was lost, sums that up for me.
As fear the Vee said, we've a poor record against our top 3 competetors, and if we don't win on Friday I'll be mighty dissapointed, but we've seen off the next best (Leeds in particular) reasonably comprehensively.
We're behind where we could be at this point with Royce, which is a shame, but I think the longer we go through the season the closer we'll get to the best. Hopefully with a settled off season we'll hit the ground running next year (and as a bonus we'll not have an opposition team coached by McGuire) and be a true force, rather than an also ran. I do think this squad could win trophies with Royce as coach.

Pryce is class, he'll have his edge back by the end of the season so those gaps he saw he'll get through again (assuming his injury hasn't ruined him, but I'm sure it hasn't). Leon is as hard to handle as any back in the league. His mere presence with the ball cracked Catalan t'other week.

Not one will slag off Wellens excessively, as he's a club legend, but i'm afraid the ball dies when it gets to him. Against lesser defences, he gets that extra split second to make things work, but not against the top teams. He wasn't helped on Saturday by the fact we seemed to be using the same move time and time again so we weren't exactly foxing the defence, but I reckon if eastmond had been at #1 we have likely cracked you at least once in that period of territorial dominance.

Re: Stats from Saturday : Wed Aug 10, 2011 8:08 am  

Offside Monkey wrote:

Not one will slag off Wellens excessively, as he's a club legend, but i'm afraid the ball dies when it gets to him. Against lesser defences, he gets that extra split second to make things work, but not against the top teams. He wasn't helped on Saturday by the fact we seemed to be using the same move time and time again so we weren't exactly foxing the defence, but I reckon if eastmond had been at #1 we have likely cracked you at least once in that period of territorial dominance.

It's tough with a player like Wellens - but someone needs to have the balls to drop him for the big games.

You don't get scared as an opposition fan when he tries to chime in to the line.