Re: 19 man squad announced for Leeds. : Fri Aug 29, 2014 9:20 pm  

BackrowSaint wrote:

On a positive note, LMS was very good as was Walmsley and I thought Lance played okay.

Lance reverted back to 2013 form, as did Wellens, and turner was in his early season form. Amor had a poor first stint but was better in the second half. Soliola had a death wish but was punching big holes by the end, as was Manu.

Roby had his best game of the season imo, and lms wasn't far behind him.

But as a group effort it was a very good performance, dug deep, stuck to a game plan (run em off their feet and hit them at the end) and pulled it out the bag when I didn't think we could.

Re: 19 man squad announced for Leeds. : Fri Aug 29, 2014 9:31 pm  

very pleasantly surprised by that!

Re: 19 man squad announced for Leeds. : Fri Aug 29, 2014 11:40 pm  

Great win tonight. But how did we play?

It seemed to me we spent an hour trying our level best to lose by 70+ again, apart from the fact we defended our line well. McDonnell was never in the game, the wingers got no ball, we had LMS in the centres. Wello was awful tonight. Where was he playing? He just seemed to roam around wherever he fancied, missing tackles left right and centre, often on the same play. Sia had a shocker, it was like he was trying to break some individual penalties conceeded in a game record. Turner, I won't even go into. How he's at Saints I'll never know. Seems the twitterati are after him, he seems to be getting (And reacting to) a lot of abuse from Saints fans on twitter.

Positives? Roby has his best game for a long time, Lance had a classy game, his move for LMS's try was great and ultimately it was his composure that won it for us. LMS was a deserving MOM, playing his heart out. Make the boy Captain for the rest of the season, he puts more effort in and shows more heart than any of them.

Re: 19 man squad announced for Leeds. : Sat Aug 30, 2014 12:00 am  

Saddened! wrote:

Great win tonight. But how did we play?

It seemed to me we spent an hour trying our level best to lose by 70+ again, apart from the fact we defended our line well. McDonnell was never in the game, the wingers got no ball, we had LMS in the centres. Wello was awful tonight. Where was he playing? He just seemed to roam around wherever he fancied, missing tackles left right and centre, often on the same play. Sia had a shocker, it was like he was trying to break some individual penalties conceeded in a game record. Turner, I won't even go into. How he's at Saints I'll never know. Seems the twitterati are after him, he seems to be getting (And reacting to) a lot of abuse from Saints fans on twitter.

Positives? Roby has his best game for a long time, Lance had a classy game, his move for LMS's try was great and ultimately it was his composure that won it for us. LMS was a deserving MOM, playing his heart out. Make the boy Captain for the rest of the season, he puts more effort in and shows more heart than any of them.

McDonnell - pretty anonymous but was solid when called upon, not really the game for him to force himself into really.
Makinson - again solid, but didn't really get a chance, unsurprising given he had no centre!
Percival - hope the kids okay, with nothing more than a sore head.
Jones - very strong defensively, but didn't stay wide enough to be a threat in attack.
Dawson - I understand the arguments against swift and his defence, but I don't understand how it puts him behind Dawson, who had another poor game.
Hohaia - a few people have said he had a great game, I thought he was poor minus the inside pass for lms' try. Put in some very poor kicks as well. Good drop goal though...
Wellens - was more the halfback of 2013 than the halfback he was last week ... Which wasn't good.
Amor - "knocked on" twice early one which put us under pressure, but I thought he drove it in really well, always found his front and helped the cause.
Roby - best game in a very long time. My mom
Walmsley - wasn't far behind Roby, targetted Peacock mercilessly and won collision after collision. If only he could play the ball!
Laffranchi - same as his saints career, solid if unspectacular
Lms - was 2nd behind Roby for mom. Second row suits him a lot better, and has a surprising turn of pace. Also think he did a great job in Ablett, who generally has a very good game against us.
Turner - don't know why he's getting abuse. Was pretty quiet, and missed a shocker of a conversion, but kicked a great 40/20 and forced the drop out which ultimately gave us the momentum to win.

Masoe - quiet first stint (we defended basically every minute he was on) had a great stint in the second half created the break which led to the drop out and perhaps not as explosive as recent preformances was still very good.
Soliola - I think he had a death wish! Conceded silly penalties and contributed a lot to the struggles of the first half (I was glad he was going at half time!) BUT he was very effective towards the end and punching big holes.
Manu - similar to Soliola without the silly moments. Nice footwork for his almost try too.
Flanaghan - only noticed him in the hardaker incident. Loved his twitter response though!

Re: 19 man squad announced for Leeds. : Sat Aug 30, 2014 12:44 am  

Magic Superbeetle wrote:

Hohaia - a few people have said he had a great game, I thought he was poor minus the inside pass for lms' try. Put in some very poor kicks as well. Good drop goal though...

I think that's a bit harsh. Hohaia was the only Saints player who seemed to be looking to try and put a move on which wasn't simply a one-out pass from dummy half. He was often running across the line looking for runners, but rarely had a well-timed run from a supporting player to offload to. Also, I don't know if I was seeing things, but I saw him pull off what seemed like a lot of tackles, particularly on Ablett who, as you say, often rips us up.

I thought that was a classic case of the whole not adding up to the sum of the individual parts : lots of decent individual performances, and people not doing much wrong, but the lack of a half-back pairing meant that it remained unco-ordinated throughout.

But credit where credit is due - Leeds are a very good attacking side, with two backs - Hardaker and Watkins - who've been almost unmanageable for defences in the last few weeks, yet we restricted them to just 1 try all game, and none in the second half.

Re: 19 man squad announced for Leeds. : Sat Aug 30, 2014 7:32 am  

Although we struggled in the first half you,ve got to take the positives out of the game.
We beat the Challenge Cup Winners on there own ground who have the best defensive record in superleague and restrict them to one try.
With 3 of our pivotal creative players missing and Lance returning with no match fitness we ground out the season to currently a top 2 position.
LMS has been immense for these last 2/3 of the season, Lance made 27 tackles in the game and tried to create some options.
What better incentive now next week to get a win against Warrinton to wrap up the LLS in front of a home crowd, will this be our biggest gate of the season next week.

Re: 19 man squad announced for Leeds. : Sat Aug 30, 2014 8:10 am  

I don't think we could have been any worse. The pace in which we moved the ball was horrific and we got bummed up the middle for 70mins.

Lance Hohaia had a mixed game for me. Yeah he put on the two winning plays and defended admirably, but his game management was dire. Awful kicking on 3/4th tackles straight to Hardaker.

Thought our defence was good overall though. LMS' missed tackle for their try was a shocker tho (he was defending out wide, but no excuse) but we kept Watkins and Hardaker quiet which was good.

I think a positive to take is that we couldn't have been any worse and Leeds couldn't have controlled the game any better and we still won. A lot of improvement to come.

Re: 19 man squad announced for Leeds. : Sat Aug 30, 2014 8:22 am  

Put everything else aside. If we had been offered a 13-12 win pre kick off we'd have taken it. They defended heroically at times with their 12 men, whereas we struggled at times. Unsurprising really considering the creative players missing plus using a new attacking structure for only the second time. We gave away some daft penalties and missed somectackles' but for me our defence was good. When we started to be patient and play the pressure game it paid off. Great win and top spot will be ours, a tremendous achievement.

Re: 19 man squad announced for Leeds. : Sat Aug 30, 2014 10:06 am  

I don't think we deserved the win. Leeds was very very good playing with 12 men for over a hour coming off the back if a draining challenge cup week. They also had McGuire and burrow out.

Leeds looked like the team with the extra man. They created the overlap more than we did which was pretty embrassing at times.

God knows why we went down the middle all night when we had the extra man. We was even kicking to touch on 3rd and 4th tackle which is crazy as it was given Leeds a rest.

Lms run well with the ball but his edge defence is weak and that's what we will get if he plays second row. Amor was just shocking last shocking.

Turner proved basically what is said, he's not good enough to be left in that position fulltime. He's predictable doing the same pass all the time. Doing it against Wakey is one thing but doing it against Leeds is another and he looked out of his depth.

Re: 19 man squad announced for Leeds. : Sat Aug 30, 2014 12:37 pm  

I thought we generally got better as the game went on, especially the likes of Amor and Masoe, but up until 70 minutes it looked like another example of us being dumb and Leeds being smart being the main difference. That all got turned on its head.
If Turner hadn't missed that conversion it may have ended more comfortably, but I was a little disappointed in Makinson. When he made that break in the first of there was that split second window that he had the chance to put his foot down and gas Hardaker on the outside. IMO if he'd taken it, he would have probably beaten him and scored. Albert would have gone for it. Sully definitely would have. I'm afraid that there's just a little bit of swagger, killer instinct, whatever you'd like to call it, missing from his current mindset that will stop him being a really great winger unless he gets past it.