Re: Proud to be a Saint : Sun Sep 30, 2012 11:56 am  

Hohaia started at full back against London and Salford because Wellens picked up an injury. Wellens returned at Hull KR and Simmons started with Hohaia and Lomax. Simmons did alternate to be fair but if he was that convinced on Gaskell and Lomax he'd have ran with it and fitted Hohaia in elsewhere.

Re: Proud to be a Saint : Sun Sep 30, 2012 12:08 pm  

Blobbynator wrote:

Hohaia started at full back against London and Salford because Wellens picked up an injury. Wellens returned at Hull KR and Simmons started with Hohaia and Lomax. Simmons did alternate to be fair but if he was that convinced on Gaskell and Lomax he'd have ran with it and fitted Hohaia in elsewhere.

Simmons began the season rotating players, something that people on here (except me) criticised, and he was open in saying that he was rotating players, resting them if they picked up minor knocks. Tony Smith rotated his players and look where Warrington is now.

Simmons wasn't given the chance to make a decision on Hohaia and Gaskell as he was sacked after 7 matches. So you have no idea what would have happened or who he would have ended up playing. But one thing is for sure, he didn't kick Gaskell into the oblivion of the u20s. He did, however, say in public that he wanted to teach the young players how to deal with adversity, which suggests to me that he was actively coaching them rather than taking the easy option as Rush has done and pretty much ignoring them.

Re: Proud to be a Saint : Sun Sep 30, 2012 12:17 pm  

Blobbynator wrote:

Hohaia started at full back against London and Salford because Wellens picked up an injury. Wellens returned at Hull KR and Simmons started with Hohaia and Lomax. Simmons did alternate to be fair but if he was that convinced on Gaskell and Lomax he'd have ran with it and fitted Hohaia in elsewhere.

Let us agree that we don't know whether Hohaia was offered any such guarantees.

Re: Proud to be a Saint : Sun Sep 30, 2012 12:24 pm  

Smith has the squad to rotate and rest players. Results didn't suffer too badly under Smith and they certainly didn't have a record of 2 wins from 7. Smith also knows his best half back combination and generally he'll play those two together (Briers and Myler), certainly in the big games. As I said, if Simmons was that convinced on Gaskell and Lomax he'd have moved Hohaia elsewhere from the start. Maybe it was that indecision that cost him his job?

For the record, I disagree with Mike Rush on this as Gaskell should've featured at 6 for me.

Re: Proud to be a Saint : Sun Sep 30, 2012 12:43 pm  

Blobbynator wrote:

As I said, if Simmons was that convinced on Gaskell and Lomax he'd have moved Hohaia elsewhere from the start. Maybe it was that indecision that cost him his job?

We have no idea whether it was indecision or not. On the other hand, we DO know Simmons liked to move players around and there's just as much reason to think the various positions Hohaia found himself were part of Simmons' efforts to discover which position a known utility player could work best in.

For the record, I disagree with Mike Rush on this as Gaskell should've featured at 6 for me.

You've still not answered the question - but we're definitely getting there.

Re: Proud to be a Saint : Sun Sep 30, 2012 12:48 pm  

Blobbynator wrote:

For the record, I disagree with Mike Rush on this as Gaskell should've featured at 6 for me.

Funnily enough, we went for the ultra safe Daniel Anderson style of play which needs a good long kicking game, yet the only decent player with a boot on him was sat in the reserves.

I don't know what has gone on behing the scenes, but on the face of it I am horrified by the treatment of the only natural half back at the club, who has effectively lost a year of development at a vital stage in the process. Any other club would have snatched our hands off if we'd have let him go.

Re: Proud to be a Saint : Sun Sep 30, 2012 2:03 pm  

Judder Man wrote:

How can we have a side oozing with quality when we have yet to replace with quality the likes of Long, Martyn, Sculthorpe, Cunningham and Graham.

Because those players simply do not exist anymore in our game. They cannot be replaced - start living in reality. When we had Long, Martyn, Sculthorpe etc. the opposition had Paul, Harris, Farrell, Botica, etc. Now we have Lomax, Gaskell they have Green, Myler, Smith etc. In real terms (i.e. compared to everyone else around in the league at the same time) our squad is every bit as good now as it has ever been.

Re: Proud to be a Saint : Sun Sep 30, 2012 4:03 pm  

Mugwump wrote:

More revisionist nonsense. Let's take a moment to return to the season before this one. Like this season our start to that campaign was a total calamity. We lost our star scrum half - the man we were banking years of success on - Eastmond and the team was in disarray. Then, completely out of the blue, we turned things round entirely and set forth on a tremendous winning run with two young and inexperienced halves - Lomax & Gaskell (indeed, these boards were "Lomaskell" crazy!). All thoughts of Eastmond were vaporised and we played some of the best rugby seen at the club in the last two years. Yes, we lost the Grand Final. But AT THAT POINT we had EVERY REASON to be optimistic for this season. Of course, there was the substantial problem of dealing with the loss of Graham - but in the context of modest signings made by pretty much every other SL club - Hohaia, Laffranchi and company looked like very useful assets. We could also count on a fully fit Soliola - which was effectively a new signing in itself. I don't recall too many people slagging off the signing of LMS. Moreover, Shenton looked like hitting some semblance of form (we desperately missed him in the GF) - both Makinson and Dixon ended that campaign looking like nailed on certainties etc.

NO ONE was tipping Saints to finish fourth or fifth at the start of this season. No one.

It was only AFTER our form collapsed under Simmons that suddenly everyone began to change their opinions and revise expectations. To claim otherwise is simply a lie. This is not to say a GF victory was a foregone conclusion - but if at the very start of this season someone had prophesied the breaking up of Lomax & Gaskell partnership, the collapse of the team under Simmons (who had led a team of kids ALMOST to the title) the loaning of Foster to Hull and the reversal in Dixon's form, the utter failure of Hohaia etc. etc. they would have been laughed at.

I tried reading all that but got bored. It's far to long.

Re: Proud to be a Saint : Sun Sep 30, 2012 4:12 pm  

SaintsFan wrote:

Simmons began the season rotating players, something that people on here (except me) criticised, and he was open in saying that he was rotating players, resting them if they picked up minor knocks. Tony Smith rotated his players and look where Warrington is now.

Simmons wasn't given the chance to make a decision on Hohaia and Gaskell as he was sacked after 7 matches. So you have no idea what would have happened or who he would have ended up playing. But one thing is for sure, he didn't kick Gaskell into the oblivion of the u20s. He did, however, say in public that he wanted to teach the young players how to deal with adversity, which suggests to me that he was actively coaching them rather than taking the easy option as Rush has done and pretty much ignoring them.

Simmons rotation was a strange one IMO, he said he wanted to keep players fresh but would often not use one of his players on the bench or play them for last 2 mins.

He was only rotating our wingers which was another strange one, the likes of makinson, Meli, wheeler and Ade was being rotated yet our forwards pretty much stayed the same.

Re: Proud to be a Saint : Sun Sep 30, 2012 5:15 pm  

Ninja saint wrote:

Simmons rotation was a strange one IMO, he said he wanted to keep players fresh but would often not use one of his players on the bench or play them for last 2 mins.

He was only rotating our wingers which was another strange one, the likes of makinson, Meli, wheeler and Ade was being rotated yet our forwards pretty much stayed the same.

Rotation over a season-long slog through pointless league games is utterly essential to rest players and give youngsters gametime - one of the things that has annoyed me most about Rush has been his dogged attachment to exactly the same 17 every single game all season long barring injuries. However, there's no doubt whatsoever that the way Royce went about rotating players was baffling to say the very least. And don't get me started again on the barmy 5 minute runout from the back on the bench policy...