One thing that baffled me with our tactics last night. : Sat Feb 14, 2009 8:20 am  

What i did find a bit strange last night with our tactics is we failed to capitalise on St Helens having a makeshift left hand side of a 2nd rower playing at left centre and a teenager making his debut on the wing, in the main we played down the middle but when we did decide to move the ball or put a kick in the majority of those things were aimed at the experienced Matt Gidley and Ade Gardner on the right.

If you remember last year Matt King limped off injured when we were away at St Helens so we then moved Andy Bracek to left centre to partner Kevin Penny, Saints had a field day down that side as they targeted our inexperience which was hardly a suprise, its just suprising that between Jimmy Lowes and Nigel Wright we didn`t try similar last night as most things seemed to be aimed at the St Helens right hand side.

: Sat Feb 14, 2009 8:23 am  

It looked like the coach thought...or told the players,

Saints might be weak on the right, so attack mostly on the right


Without someone realising our right is their left....

: Sat Feb 14, 2009 8:23 am  

A number of posters have alluded to this on numerous other threads so you arent the only one puzzled

: Sat Feb 14, 2009 9:10 am  

To be fair..Penny usually makes Gardner and Gidley look poop so that may be why.

: Sat Feb 14, 2009 9:27 am  

Bateman wrote:

To be fair..Penny usually makes Gardner and Gidley look poop so that may be why.

That isn`t the point though, we failed to attack a makeshift saints left hand side which included a teenager making his SL debut. Penny hasn`t shown any worthwhile form for a long while, the more you see him play the more you think that he is just a kid with raw speed that has been thrown onto a rugby league pitch and lacks the majority of the basic RL skills.

He could end up the next Paul White, blistering pace but little else.

: Sat Feb 14, 2009 11:22 am  

I thought it was bluff & double bluff kinda thing, but maybe you can end up being too clever for your own good. I thought Lowes had in mind that Saints would anticipate us targetting their youngster/backrower getting used to the centres again so we targetted Gardener, but it simply didn't work. There may have been a time when he would have cracked under the pressure, but he's a much better player now, and I thought he handled it all well, a couple of Briers kicks especially.