12 Jul: SL: St Helens v Wigan Warriors 7.45pm

[Rupert Prince]

10 hours ago, Moove said:

To be fair, given how many semi finals we've stuffed up in recent years, I reckon I'd still have doubts up until a final whistle at Wembley or Old Trafford.

That said, our first choice front row is pretty special and gets us on the front foot early on most games. I actually don't think we played too well tonight, threw a couple balls into touch, forced passes that weren't on, unforced errors etc, but very dominant in the forwards even when Walmsley and Thompson went off for half an hour. 

A fair summary.  Wigan have generally been just about up to facing up to most teams forwards in recent years, but last night many were missing and frankly were barely up to it even when available.  Several forwards have left and others injured, and of them several are ageing.  Youth is developing and that's good,  but Wigans pack over the passage of time is not strong enough up the middle.  

On top of that, last night it looks like a number of soft tries were given and both inexperience and mental laziness is the result. I believe also a couple of forwards were injured which would have contributed, so Wigans run is in danger of further hitting the buffers.  

[Chris22]

Very pleased with last night and the last three weeks as a whole. To face 2nd, 3rd and 4th place in the league, two of which were away from home and to win all three (two convincingly) should give us a lot of confidence.

I did worry in the week building up to the game that it may prove one game too far for us, but less so when I saw the two teams. Whilst Partington and Smithies look to be great prospects, it was a big ask for them to start in a derby. I also felt that we had the advantage on the bench.

The game started similar to the Warrington one, with Wigan throwing everything they had at us and we held firm. As referenced earlier, Wigan's decision to kick a penalty at 6-2 was strange. They had a decent amount of pressure on our line at that point, and taking the two released it.

Saints' weakest period of matches this year has been between minutes 20 and 40 when Walmsley and Thompson are rotated. If anything, we stepped it up in this period this week, Amor in particular was outstanding. His best performance for us for many years.

In that period we really pressured Wigan, who did a lot of defending. We only got the one try to show for it before half time. That took it out of them by the second half and we cut loose. As for the last 20, it was very odd for a derby that it reverted to an exhibition-style match with both sides throwing caution to the wind. It made for good viewing though.

A word for James Bentley too. He's really growing despite not playing in his natural position. He is making it very hard for Holbrook to drop him when Roby comes back and I anticipate he will get a bench spot until at least such time that Taia returns from injury in early to mid August.

After a tough (yet excellent) 3 weeks and an upcoming semi-final, we will probably make wholesale changes for London next week, Coote will almost certainly miss out after pulling up. I imagine Welsby, Swift, Costello, Richardson and maybe even Batchelor may play next week.

[Aidan Putt]

33 minutes ago, Chris22 said:

Very pleased with last night and the last three weeks as a whole. To face 2nd, 3rd and 4th place in the league, two of which were away from home and to win all three (two convincingly) should give us a lot of confidence.

I did worry in the week building up to the game that it may prove one game too far for us, but less so when I saw the two teams. Whilst Partington and Smithies look to be great prospects, it was a big ask for them to start in a derby. I also felt that we had the advantage on the bench.

The game started similar to the Warrington one, with Wigan throwing everything they had at us and we held firm. As referenced earlier, Wigan's decision to kick a penalty at 6-2 was strange. They had a decent amount of pressure on our line at that point, and taking the two released it.

Saints' weakest period of matches this year has been between minutes 20 and 40 when Walmsley and Thompson are rotated. If anything, we stepped it up in this period this week, Amor in particular was outstanding. His best performance for us for many years.

In that period we really pressured Wigan, who did a lot of defending. We only got the one try to show for it before half time. That took it out of them by the second half and we cut loose. As for the last 20, it was very odd for a derby that it reverted to an exhibition-style match with both sides throwing caution to the wind. It made for good viewing though.

A word for James Bentley too. He's really growing despite not playing in his natural position. He is making it very hard for Holbrook to drop him when Roby comes back and I anticipate he will get a bench spot until at least such time that Taia returns from injury in early to mid August.

After a tough (yet excellent) 3 weeks and an upcoming semi-final, we will probably make wholesale changes for London next week, Coote will almost certainly miss out after pulling up. I imagine Welsby, Swift, Costello, Richardson and maybe even Batchelor may play next week.

Yes it’s been a particularly good run of results for Saints.

Wholesale changes for next weeks game yes please

[Manx RL]

When was the last time saints beat a team above them in the table? 

Apparently that’s the datum for progress.

[hullste]

1 hour ago, Chris22 said:

Very pleased with last night and the last three weeks as a whole. To face 2nd, 3rd and 4th place in the league, two of which were away from home and to win all three (two convincingly) should give us a lot of confidence.

I did worry in the week building up to the game that it may prove one game too far for us, but less so when I saw the two teams. Whilst Partington and Smithies look to be great prospects, it was a big ask for them to start in a derby. I also felt that we had the advantage on the bench.

The game started similar to the Warrington one, with Wigan throwing everything they had at us and we held firm. As referenced earlier, Wigan's decision to kick a penalty at 6-2 was strange. They had a decent amount of pressure on our line at that point, and taking the two released it.

Saints' weakest period of matches this year has been between minutes 20 and 40 when Walmsley and Thompson are rotated. If anything, we stepped it up in this period this week, Amor in particular was outstanding. His best performance for us for many years.

In that period we really pressured Wigan, who did a lot of defending. We only got the one try to show for it before half time. That took it out of them by the second half and we cut loose. As for the last 20, it was very odd for a derby that it reverted to an exhibition-style match with both sides throwing caution to the wind. It made for good viewing though.

A word for James Bentley too. He's really growing despite not playing in his natural position. He is making it very hard for Holbrook to drop him when Roby comes back and I anticipate he will get a bench spot until at least such time that Taia returns from injury in early to mid August.

After a tough (yet excellent) 3 weeks and an upcoming semi-final, we will probably make wholesale changes for London next week, Coote will almost certainly miss out after pulling up. I imagine Welsby, Swift, Costello, Richardson and maybe even Batchelor may play next week.

Totally agree with everything said in particular about Amor who was absolutely outstanding during his stint. 

[EagleEyePie]

4 hours ago, Chris22 said:

Very pleased with last night and the last three weeks as a whole. To face 2nd, 3rd and 4th place in the league, two of which were away from home and to win all three (two convincingly) should give us a lot of confidence.

I did worry in the week building up to the game that it may prove one game too far for us, but less so when I saw the two teams. Whilst Partington and Smithies look to be great prospects, it was a big ask for them to start in a derby. I also felt that we had the advantage on the bench.

The game started similar to the Warrington one, with Wigan throwing everything they had at us and we held firm. As referenced earlier, Wigan's decision to kick a penalty at 6-2 was strange. They had a decent amount of pressure on our line at that point, and taking the two released it.

Saints' weakest period of matches this year has been between minutes 20 and 40 when Walmsley and Thompson are rotated. If anything, we stepped it up in this period this week, Amor in particular was outstanding. His best performance for us for many years.

In that period we really pressured Wigan, who did a lot of defending. We only got the one try to show for it before half time. That took it out of them by the second half and we cut loose. As for the last 20, it was very odd for a derby that it reverted to an exhibition-style match with both sides throwing caution to the wind. It made for good viewing though.

A word for James Bentley too. He's really growing despite not playing in his natural position. He is making it very hard for Holbrook to drop him when Roby comes back and I anticipate he will get a bench spot until at least such time that Taia returns from injury in early to mid August.

After a tough (yet excellent) 3 weeks and an upcoming semi-final, we will probably make wholesale changes for London next week, Coote will almost certainly miss out after pulling up. I imagine Welsby, Swift, Costello, Richardson and maybe even Batchelor may play next week.

Good summary. With regards to Wigan kicking the penalty to make it 6-4 I actually thought it was the right decision. It wasn't at a time when we were putting pressure on the Saints line, it came just a couple of minutes after going 6-2 down, when Leuluai was off the field for a concussion assessment and it was pretty much a gift of 2 points we hadn't earned. It was either a guaranteed 2 to put us within a penalty of drawing level or going for 4 which was never going to happen. They chose to come away with 2 points rather than 0. Closing the gap was the right choice but unfortunately our defence buckled before half time.

Amor really made the most of coming up against Bullock and Byrne, who aren't the best of defenders. I don't think I've seen Amor run as hard as he did last night for ages. Our bench of Shorrocks, Hankinson, Byrne and Bullock shows how weak we were in that department.

[FearTheVee]

3 hours ago, EagleEyePie said:

It was either a guaranteed 2 to put us within a penalty of drawing level or going for 4 which was never going to happen. 

That's exactly the point - it signalled to the Saints players that Wigan thought breaching the defence was "never going to happen".

[dkw]

Does anyone know if Wigan had any injuries? 

[bobbruce]

I can see why people think that score line is a bit embarrassing....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

. But be fair Saints probably had one eye on the Halifax game. 

[EagleEyePie]

13 hours ago, FearTheVee said:

That's exactly the point - it signalled to the Saints players that Wigan thought breaching the defence was "never going to happen".

But it wasn't going to happen and Saints would have been confident of that, and even more so once we'd failed to score. They needed to take the points when they could get them.