Jimmy Carr wrote:
I'm looking forward to my Monday Night fix of SL, this should on paper be a great game. (I'm an FC fan by the way)
But from what I've seen of Saints this year, I'm struggling to see past an easy Leeds win, which doesnt sit well with me (we all hate Leeds etc).
I know you guys have had terrible injuries to contend with, something we can empathise with, but for me the brand of rugger under Brown just doesnt seem very 'Saints'
What do you lot think about that? Are you happy with Brown?
For me you seem to have gone from that traditional expansive game to a rough and tumble. almost dirty brand of rugby we saw from the Giants under Brown?
Or perhaps its havnig to play that way because of the injuries?
I genuinley would like to Saints winning after FC! Great fans and traditionaly pleasing on the eye for the neutral, this year though, not so much.
Its all just a mess at Saints. The only positive way of looking at it is that brown is going to have a good persepective of exactly what need doing to build us up.
We have the following problems
-Injuries. Not just the number, but injuries to key personel - ie Roby and Lomax
-No half backs. Moving Lomax to #1, Gaskell leaving under a cloud, the disasterous move for lance Hohaia to play #6 and our inability to keep Gary Wheeler on the field means we have no scrum half (have to use Wilkin) and are very limited with our choice at 6 (using Paul Wellens FFS).
-Senior Forwards underperforming. Perry's lack of fitness and inconsistency when on the field, Laffranchi being signed as a prop and (this season) looking very jaded, TP being a year older and LMS also being infuriatingly inconsistant.
-No clear game plan. Its no wonder that with all the chopping and changing we've had to do, we can't really work out what's going on, but there's no clear system that players can just slot in and out of like at, say, Wigan. Our game plan under Rush was very simple and limited us - whilst we managed to compete and finish there or there about, we had little inability to break down better teams without a super effort to crush it up front. I suspect Brown's intention is to teach us to "play what we see" a lot more in order to give us more options in attack, but its goign to take a while to build this up from where we are now.
In short. We've currently got little to offer other than some impressive youngsters like Thompson and Percival. Once we get a scrum half to play around, we'll be miles and miles better. Realistically though, we need to sign a full time 6 as well as if (our strongly rumoured target for 7) Walsh gets injured, we're back to square one. We also need to clear out the dead wood of Perry and Boof who's usefulness has expired. Whilst TP is still great on his day and still not a bad player when going through the motions, his big games are fewer than they used to be and he can't be cheap.
Soliola being back on Monday will do us some good, but he's only one man.
