tonights performance

[R Douglas]

Having been confined to the house with swine flu, and feeling s@:t and lacking my normal emotion all the way through the game, I feel for once that I'm making quite an impartial and balanced view on tonight's game. In summary:-

We're getting close to having a decent team.
We're playing with a great team spirit.
We make too many basic errors.
Amos had a bad game.
Our discipline has improved immensely but we get too many deisions given against us.
We are not clever enough to finish off Saints (yet).
Saints were mising more key players than us.
We need a couple of key signings to beat this f@£*$%g team on a regular basis.
Although they won with a "never give up spirit" that has to be applauded . . . that is not a great Saints team anymore.

Our biggest measure will be how we turn up next week (supporters and team) as tonight didn't mean that much for this season. Our bigget loss tonight was a failure to overcome the mental barrier that we can't beat Saints in Merseyside!

Huddersfield may well stop us from getting the revenge that we really need, let's just all get behind the boys to ensure that we're there to challenge for our cup, whoever gets there.

And if anyone wants to debate who is the better player in ST and The Lucky One . . . stop drinking and go to bed. For once and for the next few years, we do have it over on our Scouse friends.

[highland convert]

Watching on Sky Eastmant had stopped before the second pump of the arm took him over. No try the lads should have won. That said they shut down Stains. They answered the critics. Roberts had a howler but the ref failed to protect him. Twice Meli clearly took him in the air as he gathered and Thaler gave knock ons. That said his positional play as a winger is cat, all to often he is well forward of his centre. Sammy's crunch on Fatman was a classic. That had to hurt. As has been said, in poor conditions the lads turned up to play. Phelps lost a ball in the air, it happens other than that he did little wrong. Riddell was emmense most of the game and he played longer, again the knitpickers will heap disquiet on his every mistake. Lulu played a good game without the snap that would have seen an easy victory but does not deserve the critisism. Same team next week with Lockers and or Bailey back should see off wire,
Jim

[Woodentop07]

We should of won.
We didn't turn our pressure into points, I said to my mate after we had our 20 minute spell on their line in the second half that if we didn't score Saints would nick it!!
We also made a few to many mistakes.
The effort and defence was top draw.

Bring on the Semi!!! It's gonna be a long week at work!!

[pedro]

Thought our pack was awesome Flanaghan hits like a train and the other backliners and props to be fair bullied Saints. Proud of them tonight. Only thing I though we were poor was the link up play with both centres was poor we seemed a bit clueless there and put bad passes/dropped balls a lot in that area.

Least we were up for it and I think Saints know the better team lost

[weststand-rich]

We had the best of the stats and gifted them the game with our errors.Disappointing considering Saints had no bench whatsoever. We were the better team there and unfortutately lost. Saints should consider themselves lucky and nothing more.

For us there's only really Roberts who had a stinker and needed gaffer tape to hold the ball. Apart from Phelps did-he didn't-he knock on I thought he was playing well at fullback.

Eastmond is a good player, but he's a loner and a chancer. With saints playing him and pryce at 6&7 they have long term half back problems in the making. Dare I say it, but in his chancing regard he reminds me of Dennis Moran. The last 3 times we've played him, Bailey took care of him and gave him a good spanking everytime he got uppity. Shame he wasn't there tonight.

[LooseHead]

Phelps and Roberts struggled but no more than any winger / fullback would in those conditions - Meli had the same probs.

Riddell IMO was great - the long kicks early in the second half to turn St's around and his hard defence on Graham, Flannery etc lead the pack around a bit.

[ian b]

Cameron Phelps dropped one ball, he has been outstanding for us at fullback, but yet again people on this site only look to criticise, the same with Tommy L, things didn't go his way tonight and he had a bad day at the office, as a player I know what this feels like, just a shame a few others don't see this.

fair comment

[kick it int duggie again]

on the way out i was talking to an old guy from saints who said thank god we are getting back to how it should be between us and them, close games that can go either way, no complaints from me.

[jimofwigan]

Both teams played very well. St helens looked like the team heading the league and so did Wigan.One performance not talked about was that of the disciplinary committee who allowed a thug who punched and broke another mans eye socked to be on the field of play.Also the ref who turned a blind eye to an early high tackle by that same person.
Despite that the only thing that separated these two sides was luck. Gidly's try from Tommy's boot and the aqua plane try due to the weather conditions near the end

[MrDave]

I think it was proof that Noble's up the middle rugby can only get you so far. Wigan controlled the game for long periods but against a good defence had very little idea in attack. Apart from improvisation from Sam Tomkins and an excellent pass from Joel Tomkins in the first half were wasn't much in the way of breaking the St Helens line.

The set moves from Wigan were awful, too easy to read and most of the time Wigan tried to play them too close to the touch line.