It was a decent game, but interesting to see the contrasting emotions on display. In reality there was absolutely nothing between the sides, both defended well but both clearly have deficiencies. Saints fans are despondent as our attack was just woeful, calls to sack the coach and replace the entire team. Wire on the other hand jubilant and praising all their players for the superb performance. Yet if Makinson's try is given or the ref doesn't stop the game when King faked his injury, Saints would have won the game. Fine margins.
I was really impressed with your halves. Judging by how they played, I think you'd be mad to axe either of them for Williams this season. Austin was genuinely fantastic, a threat all night and Widdop looks back to his NRL best. Our spine looks like it might be one year too many. Coote just isn't getting there in attack, and under Woolf we only have two moves, the sweep to the left for Coote and the reverse pass on the inside to Coote. We tried both repeatedly, but the halfbacks were forced to wait and hold the pass as Coote was just too slow in arriving. I think we'd be better putting Dodd to 7 and changing the playbook a little to freshen things up. We've potentially only got Lomax remaining next season out of our 1,6,7,9 so there's a good chance we'll fall short this year as we're lacking there. A Challenge Cup win would be nice however given how long it's been.
I've seen shouts that Hill, Cooper and Philbin 'smashed' our pack, but the pack doesn't concern me at Saints. We spent big portions of the game playing one out rugby in your 20, so we must have got there somehow, we certainly didn't lose the territorial battle at all and were never under much pressure at the other end of the pitch. With Lees and Bentley to come back fresh towards the end of the season it isn't the pack causing our problems.
For all the criticism of Price, he's a decent coach. He's found a way to frustrate and completely nullify Saints. It's certainly exposed how limited a coach Woolf is. It could still be your year if you could engineer a route to a Grand Final against Saints, I'd certainly have you as favourites. But it'll probably be us that spoil that for you by not getting there. Yet you got absolutely obliterated by Cas in the semi the other week, the mysteries of sport.
