Deadly dull game. Only good thing was keeping them to nil
Deadly dull game. Only good thing was keeping them to nil
Had we continued in the same vein as the first 10 minutes, I’d have turned off before half time through boredom. As it was, I found a lot of interest in our defensive patterns and put HKR’s lack of attacking ideas mainly down to our excellence in shutting them down. I can also excuse our deficiencies in attack given the absence of Coote, Percival and Knowles allied with the effort from HKR.
I think it goes deeper than that. We seem utterly incapable of creating space out wide, far less an overlap. Our halves seem incapable of spotting attacking opportunities out wide when they arise. I love Lomax and he is a great player but I feel he is just holding on to the ball for too long. He runs quite laterally at times and the defenses slide out and they are ready for when he eventually passes it. Fages had one moment of brilliance in the first half but did very little else.
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I seem to remember games like last night when under Holbrook. We would come out first 10-15 mins and blast teams away. Then the momentum would begin to fall away and we would end up in the "arm wrestle" then the energy would pick up again in the last 20 mins.
I feel under Woolf we are better prepared for this period in the game as our defence is better.
As for last night's game. We've come out the the victors, no serious injuries and nilled a very game opposition.
We are missing the direction of Coote , but Lomax is a very capable leader, he just needs to calm down a bit.
Fages played well and linked up with Welsby.
Our forward pack is split into two teams.
Alex and Lees operate on a fast paced, high intensity which gives us that great start.
LMS and Amor provide us with the stabilty in those parts of the game when things slow down a bit.
Might need to click a bit more into gear next week. But that will come with game time.
I get what you're saying regarding our attack but I was looking at it last night and there were quite a few instances were I'm thinking "give the ball" especially from our 2 SR's but they seem to be playing to the instruction of straightening up and hitting the line for a quick PTB. Another thing that was bugging me was that as we're setting our stall out to play through the middle, why isn't there someone running off the shoulder off whoever is taking the ball in? That seems fairly basic to me but seems too much of a gamble for Woolf. As I said, I know what we do is effective but this squad is capable of winning and winning with a bit of style, so why not do that and give the fans what they want to see? IMO, it comes down to Woolf looking after his own interests first and securing himself a NRL (fair enough) playing the robotic rubbish much loved down under. Cunningham was crucified for doing the same thing although obviously results were different back then but just because something is effective doesn't make it right, not all the time anyway.
KR never looked a threat but last week came within a whisker of beating Catalan. Note how they followed Wigan/Wire’s tactic of peeling off one at a time to slow our ruck speed and we still beat them 25-0. They couldn’t match us in any position, at any point or in any play. Their dogged scramble defence is why the score line wasn’t bigger, they made very few individual mistakes to leave themselves open.
Like last season, Rovers will claim a couple of scalps but I doubt we will be one of them.....
On the point of entertainment we aren’t ever gonna play like 2018/19 vintage under Woolf but as Dave alluded to above, the results are there for all to see. It’s possible that Woolf could win the lot this season and STILL not be held in the same regard as Justin......
He’ll be gone at the end of his contract no doubt, and we’ll be on the merry-go-round looking for a coach.
Can't stop the spirits when they need you.
This life is more than just a read through.
It was a mixed performance really.
We came out the blocks very quickly with aggressive defence and our forwards were completely dominant early on making yards with ease. The two tries we scored were excellent and give us a glimpse of what we can do with the ball. I particularly liked the 2nd try as we showed some nice offloads and off the cuff play which opened the game up. I liked Fages taking on the line and making the break before feeding Welsby for the try, that was good to see.
After that, it was almost as if the game was too easy and we took our foot off the pedal which allowed KR to get a foothold in the game.
It was a better performance than our 1st game though and we showed some gradual improvement on that. Still alot of work to do with the ball, but I'm sure we'll improve in that area with Coote, Percival and Knowles back in. We probably lacked a bit of impact without Paasi aswell who showed nice touched last week in his spell. Defensively we were outstanding again. 10pts conceded in our last 4 games is incredible really and is allowing us to slowly get our attack together because we have such a good defensive base to work from.
I thought the two new signings showed up well. Mata'utia looks a handful with the ball and Thompson is a real workhorse. Matty Lees looks to be improving and LMS & Amor are both good options from the bench.
Originally Posted by Despondent Dave
Wow. Some of the comments im reading.. Moaning for the sake of moaning (same old same on here)
Fagues gets slated on here when he had a great game, hes such a solid hardworking player.
Welsby just looks so natural when he has his moments of brilliance, and with the confidence to try anything. His development is very exciting.
Saints can definitely improve on their plays out wide. We need to be setting up the wingers more for sure..
Lees looking like we all thought he would.
Amor looking good too
lms on fire I thought. Love his energy when he comes on
Like to see Smith get a bit more time, i think he brings a lot of energy and definitely could do with the game time.
One thing from last nights game when attacking HKR player gets tackled stands up pushes Saints player away Penalty to Saints. Now if there was ever a move that was going to get milked by the usual suspects Wire/Wigan this is it. All the tackling player has to do is hold on to the attacker give him some verbals he pushes him away pressure over for defending team.
I know all about discipline but if someone holds on to you and gives you insulting remarks about your Mrs pushing him away is the least you can do. A cheats charter that one.
On the Back foot looking for the front one.
No One has mentioned Young Bachelor Thought he was good for the short time he was on.
Holbrook will always be the one who turned it around though, I think a lot of us were at our lowest ebb as supporters at the end of the KC era, feeling disconnected to the club and everything it stood for. Holbrook didn’t just change the on field aspect but the whole approach at the club, which is why some of his shortcomings in the trophy cabinet are over looked.
I’m surprised at the calls of boring, reminds me of the Daniel Anderson era where our defensive patterns were so much more advanced than everyone else’s. We have conceded 3 points a game over the last 4 matches, averaging 0.5 tries conceded a game - even if it is over two seasons that’s pretty insane. I also think last year our defence suffered tremendously without Knowles leading, and we seem to be coping much better this time round. I like Mata’utia and do look forward to him playing wider in the ruck when Knowles is back. As for the attack it’s quite stunted at the moment, but I’m not worried about it, we’re still good for 4-5 tries a game, and I would much rather be clicking and fluid in round 20 rather than round 2. Am confident it’s a work in progress, and missing 4 yesterday didn’t help
Yes he was very good indeed. Lees first spell was exceptional. Welsby was very good at FB.
Like the style of football with offloads in the first half.
Saints lost their way a little and some of the "clunkyness" came back but defence as ever was mean and tight.
I was underwhelmed a little with the Leigh game and last week but no complaints from last night.
If it had carried on like the first ten minutes then I'd have sat down and watched a wonderful spectacle. That's the kind of rugby I've been brought up on. It was fast, entertaining and showed off our attacking capabilities. It was the retreat back into the grind that was the boredom.
For the next 73 minutes, we played just about the worst team in the league and scored two more tries, both when they were down to 12 men. This despite them losing three forwards to injury and us being camped in their half for the forty minutes. And let's not hear the stuff about HKR being much improved or us having players missing. We beat them by one point at home last season because we refused to move the ball about and allowed them to get a foothold. The same happened again. We stopped taking risks, despite the fact that when we do, we score tries.
I have no doubts about our defensive excellence. It's as good as I've ever seen it in all of my years, and that is the single reason we won the title last year. However, I can't pretend that I get much enjoyment out of watching Woolf's Saints. The team is not allowed to express itself and the grind often comes to a halt because the halves are exceptionally limited on the last play. Once again, the centres got no ball. People bagged Josh Simm for a couple of mistakes, but when you only get three passes a game, then your hands are going to be rusty. Despite Welsby being our best player, clearly we miss Coote's link between the middle and the edges, but our two centres must be the most redundant players in the British game.
I mentioned this last week, but there is going to be an argument of winning v entertainment that lasts all year, and should we win the competition, then we'll all take it, but when you only have to roll into the top four to win the thing, and you don't have to win every single week, then entertainment is largely what is going to put bums on seats. The world will be a different place when we come out of the Covid restrictions, and the game will be a much harder sell. It's going to be even harder if the team play a slightly more successful version of the brand we saw under Rush and Cunningham. At the moment, pretty much every game of RL I watch, both here and Australia, is infinitely more enjoyable to watch than the games we are involved with, and this is something that fans of other clubs have started to comment upon too.
THIS YEAR LENDING SUPPORT TO:- St. Helens RLFC, Manchester City, Celtic, Alemannia Aachen, Steps 1 to 6 Non-League Football
It is a very realistic possibility that Woolf will have won three or four major trophies by the time he leaves compared to Holbrook's one, but in sport, coaches often reap the reward of legacy.
If you look at football, most learned Liverpool supporters will say that Bill Shankly should be revered as the one and not Bob Paisley. Whilst Paisley did a great job and won many more honours than Shankly did, it was Shankly that laid the foundations after taking over a team that had been out of the top flight for a long time. Paisley was employed to carry on and harness that good work.
Justin Holbrook took over a side that looked like it was in a mess. Back in 2017, I doubt many Saints supporters were thinking that any form of success was around the corner. We looked awful. Yet, he transformed that side within months to getting within a stupid penalty of the Grand Final. In 2018 and 2019, we dominated the weekly competition like no other team has in the Super League era over a two year period. What is more, we entertained with it. We did lose a couple of big games, but the players hadn't got the big match mentality. That isn't necessarily something you can coach. You have to learn it via experience, and those players now have that experience.
When you consider where we started and where we finished, less than two and a half years later, Justin Holbrook will quite rightly be regarded with more fondness, and not just because of the quality he left us with, but because for the first time in many years we played Rugby League in the manner Saints fans were once accustomed too. It was a joy to watch.
I think we only have to look at the way that he's transformed Gold Coast to see how great a coach he is.
Last edited by DD; 2nd April 2021 at 14:37.
THIS YEAR LENDING SUPPORT TO:- St. Helens RLFC, Manchester City, Celtic, Alemannia Aachen, Steps 1 to 6 Non-League Football
No arguing with any of that, all fair points.
I have said time and again that if Walmsley hadn’t spent most of 2018 out of the team, and had been at his peak at the end of the season we would have fared better in that semi against Wire, and maybe Justin would have been a 2 time winner himself. You sometimes have to play the cards that you are dealt, no matter how bad the hand!
I didn’t like the way we played at the start of last season, and IMHO it took the “6 again” rule appearing to force teams (Woolf included) to reduce the wrestling at the ruck. If Covid and the rule changes hadn’t have happened (again, playing with the cards dealt) I don’t believe we would have had the same success as we did in 2020, and we would have all been calling for Woolf to leave (as many people were after Wire won the Cup (the “We nilled the Champions” trophy I mean....))
Can't stop the spirits when they need you.
This life is more than just a read through.
It's interesting to look back and note how much criticism Woolf's brand of rugby got in the three week period between losing at home to Wigan in what turned out to be the last league game of last season and the semi-final against Catalans. In reality, had Zak Hardaker kicked the goal in the Final, that wouldn't have been airbrushed the way it has been. Those are the fine lines of sport.
It reminds me very much of the Daniel Anderson era. I'll be honest, at the time, and with the hindsight of access to every seasons highlights, I thought 2006 was a pretty dull one that is remembered with fondness because of the trophy haul rather than the entertainment. Anderson got the best out of his team by playing to its strengths. Apart from Jamie Lyon, our backs were not a patch on the 2000 team, and there's no doubt his system was responsible for the successes of that year, but the enjoyment was a fraction of what we'd seen in the Millward era. Like now, we had changed to a forward dominated system and it rather unfortunately kick-started a ten year spell of utter tedium across the whole spectrum of British Rugby League. Only with the successes of Leeds in 2016, Castleford in 2017 and Saints in 2018 did it convince the coaches that moving the ball around like teams used to reaped a more likely reward of wins.
My sincere hope is that Woolf will not be the new Anderson. Not in the sense of the team he had and its successes, obviously, but in that his formula, his plan for how the game should be played is not so successful that others try to copy it and take the game down a path I'd rather not see it go. Much as I want to see Saints successful, the good of the game I fell in love with has to be my first priority.
After Anderson got his hands on our game, it took more than a decade to see me fall back in love with the product on the pitch, and I still enjoy watching games again now, but not really ours so much. Not under Woolf. At the end of the day, I watch Rugby League to be entertained. My sporting teams have given me enough silverware to last a lifetime, and I'll always be grateful for that, but the warm glow associated with knowing that you are going to enjoy your entertainment is what it's all about, or we'd all do other things and simply bask in the glory of reading the results in the paper.
THIS YEAR LENDING SUPPORT TO:- St. Helens RLFC, Manchester City, Celtic, Alemannia Aachen, Steps 1 to 6 Non-League Football
The problem is some fans see the entertainment style of play being the "be all and end all" of a good coach when in reality its not all clear cut as that. Under Millward and Holbrook we played great rugby but we also had some poor periods where we lost in the "big games" struggled with composure, ball retention, became fatiqued at the buisness end of the season.
Anderson and Woolf have similar methods to turn us into a NRL type side based on toughness, patience and great defence. Only when we have the upperhand and game control we can start scoring points, last season we did something similar when we went into a 10 game winning run scoring an average of 30+ points per game and tonked some teams with zero points against.
The lockdown has given Woolf and the coaching staff a reduced quota of players to work from which has allowed him to work better with the young players outside the 17, if Woolf wins the Grand Final and Challenge Cup Final this season he should go down as one of the best coaches to be at the club, but I have this feeling that a minority of fans will not accept that.
I’ve just watched a video clip of the Fages to Welsby try. What precedes it are passes to keep the ball alive but when Fages spots a gap I think him and Welsby go into a well rehearsed set piece move. That opening period was entertaining but I agree with others that you’d have to be a real aficionado of defensive play to have been entertained throughout the game.
One positive I took from it though was that I was never worried when Hull KR were seemingly on top. I never thought for a minute that they would win.
It hasn’t been mentioned much but I thought Roby was brilliant. Because of the knee in the head to Smith he played a lot of extra minutes and he helped relieve pressure with his kicking game. It might have been better to see us proceeding up field with ease but he did what was necessary to calm things down. The man is the consummate professional.
And on the knee to the head. The Sky commentary team barely mentioned it - just accidental. If one of our players had done that there’d have been replay after replay etc.
P.S. I’ve just been watching the highlights on Sky and have only just realised that Hicks referred it to the video ref to check the merits of an 8 point try. No mention of that by the commentary team. Surely even accidental contact with the head merits a penalty or penalty try?
Last edited by Suttoner; 2nd April 2021 at 18:01. Reason: P.S.
He is a charismatic, engaging character & it was a breath of fresh air after the Cunningham spell. I don't know about anyone else but I wasn't exactly chuffed watching us. He made me enjoy RL again.
You only have to look back to my posts a year ago to see how critical of Woolf I was. But I believe I was wrong. He might be a bit less charismatic than Holbrook but he rode that criticism and coached us to a grand final win. He's made us tough, resilient & competitive for 80 minutes. Staying in the arm wrestle is winning us the big games and he won't change for the also rans. He wants consistency.
I'm not a massive fan of the conservative stuff either, and it has probably led to the chronic underuse of Naiqama but with there being literally nothing else happening, I am quite content watching us. I'll take it. But it isn't pretty at times, it is dour.
He won't change though Woolf. And why would you when he's won a comp?
I think what we have to remember is that our style of play immediately changed when Cunningham went out of the door. For the first 3 games Long and Lolesi opened up our game style straight away, when Holbrook came to the magic weekend for the Saints thrashing of Hull 45-0 the groundwork had already been done by Long +Lolesi.
It was always upwards and onwards after that with the team, club and fans to get that link back, seem to remember he went to the USA for 4 or 5 days for community sport relations which he adopted straight away. I don't think Longy got full recognition of the way he applied his attack coaching skills. When Longy left we started to lose our attacking shapes but we were lucky to have Ben Barba to add to our attack.