Re: Utterly Pathetic defence : Sat Feb 25, 2012 10:30 am  

General Zod. wrote:

The loss of Gidley, Cunningham & Graham in successive seasons has heaped extraordinary responsibility on Roby because the harsh reality is that your players are no-where near as good as what you think they are and blaming Simmons is nonsense because he just does not have the players.

Funny how everybody was saying exactly the same thing about us last season too! But we still got to a GF.

Re: Utterly Pathetic defence : Sat Feb 25, 2012 10:34 am  

SaintsFan wrote:

Robinson hasn't achieved a thing yet, by the criteria most Saints fans go on, so I don't know why he's getting the raps. He's actually achieved less than Simmons.

neither did Potter - Robinson is a class above Potter in coaching ability - that's not me saying that but some of the players who have played/still playing under both...

Re: Utterly Pathetic defence : Sat Feb 25, 2012 10:40 am  

SaintsFan wrote:

Funny how everybody was saying exactly the same thing about us last season too! But we still got to a GF.

Yes, you did. But crucially you were found wanting when it came to the crunch because of a lack of individual class which Leeds had even though they were less consistent throughout the season.

In today's modern game I'm coming to the opinion that the props and hookers account for well over 50% of determining a team's performance and the Cunningham/Roby/Graham enabled the rest of your team to play on the front foot to make them look far better than they actually where.

Now there's only Roby left, as soon as Catalans stopped giving away penalties and put their foot down, your team was found wanting in a really big way.

You've got to remember that your playing with a full strength squad where as Rovers last week and Catalans this week have quite a few injuries (particularly Rovers) so I don't think everything is going to be rosy when the grounds harden up.

Re: Utterly Pathetic defence : Sat Feb 25, 2012 11:14 am  

General Zod. wrote:

You've got to remember that your playing with a full strength squad where as Rovers last week and Catalans this week have quite a few injuries (particularly Rovers) so I don't think everything is going to be rosy when the grounds harden up.

yeah,Catalans are missing Simon,Anderson ,Stacul not to mention Pelissier who,for me is the greatest thing since sliced bread,without any disrespect to the reliable Ben Fisher

Re: Utterly Pathetic defence : Sat Feb 25, 2012 11:37 am  

We can look at players, combo etc etc, but all was well for over 50 mins. We shut them down, possession and territory were in our favour. OK TP went off, which was unfortunate, however from 20 minutes to 50 minutes all the 5 live commentators could talk about where how we where dominating Catalan. How Catalan where struggling to get out of their half, how their forwards were not making it back to the attacking line until the 2nd or 3rd tackle. So for half an hour we had signs that their forwards where shot.

Did we employ our fastest player at this point? No. Instead we ground on with the same players, thinking momentum would not change. As a coach you have to watch both sides and make desicions to take advantage. Take the GF, Brain Mac see's our forwards tired, he throws burrows on and runs our forwards ragged. All we did we spell our forwards less and let their energy levels drop, catalan kept rotating and eventually as in all teams when 17 are playing 16 their energy levels evened out and started to surpass ours.

We can say it's sloppy tackling technique, but that was not evident in the first half. It's tiredness. Roby is doing 80mins each week no rest at all. He maybe great but he is human and he will tire.

The fact Royce had a go at the ref last night is a worry too. For me fans can moan all day about the ref. that's their one eyed ness.

But when a coach does it, it's an indication that he has run out of ideas. He has tried what he knows and it did not work and so he lumps the blame elsewhere.

This is not a call for him to go, but to get a grip. A back on the bench is an over precautious approach that will look great in 1 match out of 10 when a back gets injured. But in most games it means sharing more workload over less players. It should be a utility player who can play multiple roles, which lance could have done last night!! Or it should be another forward.

We had 3 half backs on the field last night ffs. If one goes down, 2nd row to centre job done.

A loss to Catalan is no problem, I lost to Catalan when we were 24/26 - 8 ahead with 30 minutes left is a problem, not in terms of us fighting for the top 8, but certainly fighting for a top 4 spot.

Re: Utterly Pathetic defence : Sat Feb 25, 2012 1:02 pm  

For me Flannery, Foster and Wellens shouldnt be near the starting line up (not saying there bad players just atm they shouldnt be in. Lomax and Makinson are more than capable kickers.

Dixon has been doing well in the first few matches really looks like he's a good, solid player but a level up from seasons gone by.

Granted Simmons was going to rotate for the first few matches to find his best 17 but the chopping and changing is going to cost us in the long run. Fair enough in his Saints career he's never really had a choice on the team he picks due to injuries and etc but if the chopping and changing carries on i'll probably say i preferred us playing in the middle of an injury crisis.

Re: Utterly Pathetic defence : Sat Feb 25, 2012 1:09 pm  

General Zod. wrote:

Yes, you did. But crucially you were found wanting when it came to the crunch because of a lack of individual class which Leeds had even though they were less consistent throughout the season.

Yeah whatever. That's why the GF followed the pattern of the league games until we lost our third player to injury in the second half. And that's why our totally untalented winger/fullback scored the best try of the match to get us in a winning position. Sure, we have no individual class at all.

Re: Utterly Pathetic defence : Sat Feb 25, 2012 1:15 pm  

bewareshadows wrote:

We can say it's sloppy tackling technique, but that was not evident in the first half. It's tiredness. Roby is doing 80mins each week no rest at all. He maybe great but he is human and he will tire.

It wasn't tiredness. They were exactly the same at Hull KR, but after only 15 minutes when in a 14 point lead (which should have been more had Jamie converted all the tries). So it has nothing to do with tiredness.

IMO it has everything to do with the attitude of some players, who need to get a grip and start working hard for the full 80 minutes. It was so sad to see our young guns tackling their hearts out and Wello nowhere in support and our forwards having a chat under the sticks, so to speak.

I do agree about whinging over the ref though. That made it all look like sour grapes. The last try shouldn't have stood due to Pryce's ball carrying arm being on the floor when tackled but we shouldn't have to rely on the ref. And the coach should have criticised the people who were to blame: the players; in particular the senior players.

I was getting really annoyed with Wello and his arm flapping last night, not to mention LMS and a few others who wanted the glory of the big hit instead of buckling down to a team effort. I didn't applaud them, I walked out as qu8ickly as I could after the final hooter and I don't want to see that kind of 20 minutes again by our team. They let the fans down big time and were unprofessional. As Mark Flanagan said on Twitter, the fans deserved better than what they threw out during the second half. Damn right. So give us better.

Re: Utterly Pathetic defence : Sat Feb 25, 2012 1:25 pm  

SaintsFan wrote:

I agree with this.

Something that irritated me after the GF was that Rob Burrow's try was glorified - when actually he just ducked and ran, like he always has done - .

Which of Burrow's two glorious tries do you mean? Was it his first where he changed direction ducked under the first line then shimmied around the fullback leaving him for dead and outpaced the cover or was it his second where he fainted around the first line then dummied to again out pace the cover?

Re: Utterly Pathetic defence : Sat Feb 25, 2012 1:31 pm  

Juan Cornetto wrote:

Which of Burrow's two glorious tries do you mean? Was it his first where he changed direction ducked under the first line then shimmied around the fullback leaving him for dead and outpaced the cover or was it his second where he fainted around the first line then dummied to again out pace the cover?

Like I said, he has always done it. He's small and fast. Let a small and fast player run, and that is exactly what he will do.