You mean the one where Watts clearly stripped it out?
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Friday night Castleford played without a "bobby" for the full game , allowing an extra man in the thier line defence , Brough would have had a field day against this , unfortunately not many other teams have the luxury of the guy with the best kicking game not just in the British game with the NFL included.
Defensively solid on friday. Particularly after CC.
However Cas are very limited in attack.
No Pace or threat. (gale,shenton,eden etc)
Other than the CCF blip, defence has been excellent all season.
Attack has been either sublime or very ordinary and not much in between.
Saints also not had many intense tight games.
GFs are about taking 2-3 chances in 80 mins.
Attack needs to be better. Not Harelm Globetrotters better but clinical.
Won't be easy.
I'd see it like this...
If a team scores 16 or more points against us in a play off game, we have got a major problem.
Our defence is pretty good, our effort is tremendous, particularly the back line on exit sets.
What we are not doing is building a platform with the forwards & creating pressure situations by forcing repeat sets or at least using a good short kicking game to make the opposition defence panic/scramble.
If we don't sort this out quickly, we will not make the final. Winning the final is another task entirely. As it stands, my gut feeling is that we will be losing finalists.
We are not as good as we have been made out. But that is through no lack of effort. The crunch games are played on percentages and pushing the rules to slow us down at the ruck.
We have been found out & it's going to take a special, thought out plan to counteract it
Yeah it's alright mate. Proper Utd pub like. Ale is relatively cheap & it's not a bad pint. Can see me ending up in there myself unless the George do the crazy barge trip from the city centre again. If we get there of course.
I'll be making sure I enjoy the day this time, had a bad feeling all the way down about Wembley & the day passed me by. Finals should be enjoyed, win or lose
Double post
All the games we've lost this season have been with a completion rate between 60 to 70% if we play 80 to 90 % then its a win most days of the week. I would think last week it was more of Saints losing the game rather than Wire winning it. We need to learn, apply and execute.
When we have had Coote/Fages/Lomax all fit our attack has been fine. I'm not convinced Coote was fit in the final. There are still games to go before the play offs, injuries can still play a huge part in the game. Will Wigan be as confident minus Williams and Leulai.
Warrington, without Clarke and Ratchford and likewise any other of the top 5 wihtout their star players/playmakers.
Think need to get to the bottom of these errors pretty quickly, so many of them are unforced. Not really concerned about our attack to be honest good ball wise because it’s so difficult when you make so many mistakes. Cas were a lot fresher than us so was always going to be hard to create opportunities, being without Coote and Fages only added to that as a few people have mentioned in this thread already.
Defensively I thought the majority were very good, a couple of exceptions but thought the first choice players all defended pretty well given how much defending they did at the weekend. Didn’t think Cas were great with the ball but you can only defend and play what’s in front of you.
For me the serious stuff starts now though, I’d be expecting our first choice 17 to play from here on in. I’d be surprised if we see any more players being rested between now and the end of the year.
My view was that it was an uninspiring performance in attack. I can accept this off the back of the huge disappointment of wembley which will have drained everyone physically and emotionally. I’d like to think off the back of this that such a basic plan with the ball was the game plan; defend for one another as energetically as you can, keep it simple and maintain possession.
The problem was that though the majority of our sets were very simple there were still far too many errors. There also seems to be more tolerance of interference at the PTB over the last few weeks which really detracts from a speed based team like Saints.We will have to step up and offer more in the play offs but Friday night was about winning first and foremost with style unimportant. Mission accomplished.
As referees is the hot topic at the moment. I just remembered in the Cas game at half time James Child was surrounded by stewards and escorted off the field. Don't think I recall seeing that before to that extent , did anyone else notice it.