Welsby seems to be regressing week by week now after a promising start. Looks one-paced, timid with the ball, and has come up with some poor defensive plays.
He's only a youngster and could well come through as a SL-quality player, but he's not ready yet and needs a period out of the team to rebuild his confidence and figure out how he can improve.
Felt for him a bit last night because he just looks short of confidence, I was hoping Coote might have played yesterday so we could have given him a break but obviously he wasn’t quite ready.
Hopefully he takes what he’s learnt over these last few games back to the reserves and gets some confidence back, which I’m sure he will. He’s worth persevering with though IMO, I think he’ll be a good player for us. He’s still very young as you say.
Steve Prescott MBE (1973-2013)
V
I see you are now saying the same things about fages that you said about Richardson.
Costello is a back up centre, possibly 4th in the pecking order, not sure how much of the cap you think saints should be spending on a player who you would expect at the start of the season to be playing a handful of games.
Expecting him to come on 60 minutes in and be up to speed in that position is rediculous.
I agree we were poor in attack but that was not down to individuals, we were poor as a team.
Totally agree. He needs support now from the coaches and the other players. Drop him down as you and others have said and build his play and confidence back up in the reserves. There is no disgrace in dropping back down and it will be best in his short and long term development.
And I was right on Richardson so I don’t get what your point is. I’m not saying the same things anyway, Richardson was a headless chicken who couldn’t tackle and contributed little in attack, Fages is defensively good but offensively poor and therefore offers little in attack, you know exactly what he’s going to do 5 seconds before the ball comes to him. He also doesn’t have much of a kicking game so whilst an excellent utility player, he’s a bang average scrum half and we could do a lot better.
Never said anything about the cap with regards to Costello, just simply saying he’s crap and Woolf clearly agrees by starting Knowles at centre. If he has any sense he’ll start Simm next week.
I think you're being a bit hard on Fages although I do accept he has limitations. He does have good points in that as you mention his defense is great, he'll take the line on and he keeps teams honest on their own line.
I don't know why you're getting such a hard time, you're calling it pretty well to me.
I have only seen the highlights (until Monday) but the missed tackle from Welsby was terrible. I know he has played different positions, but he seems to have made a lot of errors the past few games. I don't know if I am being over critical, or was expecting too much after all the hype about his junior performances. Taking him out of the team might be a blow to his confidence, but leave him in and every team will target him, which might be a bigger blow to his confidence.
Right now he is nowhere near good enough, too slow and inconsistent.
It's a big challenge for the club to manage his confidence as much as anything else. I still think a few games at six (maybe swapping him and Lomax round) might have been better where he's got more opportunity to get his hands on the ball without having to worry about catching high balls or clearing up after kicks. I imagine it's pretty tough for an 18 year old to concentrate on supporting the attack when he's making several errors per game in defence. Full back can be quite an isolated role at times
I know welsby is only 18 but I don't see what he offers that some of the other youngsters don't. He's poor under the high ball and looks very sluggish carrying the ball up. To add to that his distribution is poor. He should be either out on loan with Leigh or back in the u21s. Def not a saints future prospect for me.
I would agree with that
If you take the money for being a ref then you need to take the criticism for poor performances. It’s not like Hewer was press ganged into doing the job, he sees it as something he wants to do and make a few bob doing it. It’s like all jobs if you are incompetent expect criticism and if you don’t improve expect the sack.
The unfortunate thing is that in the RFL being a ref is like an old boys club, they are beyond criticism everything they do is perfect.
Tez the Saint. Am I not entitled to my opinion? I thought this was a forum for all? I say it as I see it. I wholeheartedly support my beloved Saints. Always have. Always will and I'm nearing 70years of age. We have some cracking players and some cracking talent coming thru...given the chance. But hey ho.....what do I know. See......I've mentioned no names whatsoever......
I am not bagging Welsby here but I am forming an opinion that his outstanding junior career was based on physicality rather than skill. Loose forward is the way To go.
The discussions around Welsby to 1 or 6 are purely semantics, clearly his only opportunity as I (and others)see it albeit at an early stage of his pro career is 13. Neither is he a utility type player, the sooner the lads backers & supporters acknowledge that the better it’ll be for him. Once that’s established he can start to work towards that position and develop his physique & skills set to match.
All this being said I understand he’s been filling in during injuries but it really isn’t doing him any longer term favours save for him hopefully now realising he has to make a change now he’s playing with the big lads.
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I can see why you would want to put Lomax at FB, I just wasn't keen to lose him at 6. I don't think I would want Welsby at 6, so if not Welsby then who. If you put Makinson at FB who do you put on the wing. Unless some of the reserves can step up, then what this past week shows is that we look pretty exposed in the 1/2s and 3/4s. Bentley did look like our best option to fill in at centre. Do we know how long he is out for?
I think we might see Welsby at left centre next week, the biggest problem for me is most of our backs are playing one man rugby at the moment, even Lomax is doing too much and running into heavy traffic. Percival and Coote provide options and the rest of our backs are not creative enough to compensate its all left for Lomax.
Welsby has shown some potential, particularly with his passing. But he currently isn't good enough to be playing in Super League. Defensively he is simply awful, perhaps the worst fullback I've ever seen in this regard. He can't catch the high balls and his tackling is just, well, that of an 18 year old who isn't ready to be playing professional Rugby League. I'm not saying he'll never be a player or that we should release him, but he needs an extended spell in the reserves or academy for his own good. If he plays again next week I think it's poor from Woolf and from Saints. His personal development and potentially his future in the sport is at risk now and he needs to be protected not exposed to more pressure. There are similarities with Kevin Penny at Warrington for me. He had so much potential, but was exposed for his defensive weaknesses and just left in the side until his confidence had eroded through the floor and ruined his career.
It's early in the season, but we really need to win the next two games. Lose them and we're potentially 6 points behind the top two with a derby coming up. This season isn't going to be the cake walk last season was. Every side bar us has improved and we look to have slipped backwards through a combination of the injuries that we've had this year but didn't have last season (But no worse than any other side goes through), the lack of signings meaning our first team is incredibly stale with none of them under pressure for their place and us having Woolf and his boring, generic NRL playbook and not Holbrook. Away games are going to be much harder to win this season so we need to keep the home defeats to an absolute minimum.