Fri 11th Mar: SL: St Helens v Warrington Wolves KO 20:00 (Sky)

[Ray Cashmere]

They're rightly criticised at times but Sky deserve huge credit for this segment.

I'd be happy to watch an hour of Wells & Lomax on the touch screen every pre-game Monday Night Football style.

 

[Josef K]

16 hours ago, Barley Mow said:

Setting light to an opponent should be more than 10 minutes in the bin!

The game’s gone Bluddy soft, no wunder fanz r turnin away frum the game. Corrupt, bring back the biff, no pyro no party, the RFL luv saints, 1966 and all that. 

[Josef K]

15 hours ago, johnh1 said:

High shot in a try scoring position. Automatic yellow, unless you are Saints.

Typical Saints getting away with everything and never having anyone binned because it’s Saints. What wire should do is get a hypnotist, St Helens have Kenny Craig “look into my eyes not around my eyes” and he goes and sees the official’s just before KO. It’s worked every time so far. 

[johnh1]

2 hours ago, Josef K said:

Typical Saints getting away with everything and never having anyone binned because it’s Saints. What wire should do is get a hypnotist, St Helens have Kenny Craig “look into my eyes not around my eyes” and he goes and sees the official’s just before KO. It’s worked every time so far. 

What?

[bobbruce]

6 hours ago, Ray Cashmere said:

They're rightly criticised at times but Sky deserve huge credit for this segment.

I'd be happy to watch an hour of Wells & Lomax on the touch screen every pre-game Monday Night Football style.

 

Massively underrated by everyone but saints players and fans. 

[Josef K]

I forgot to say I noticed a couple of policemen in the ground on Friday night, it’s the first time ive seen that for years & years at Saints. 

[TheFlash]

On 12/03/2022 at 13:29, Ray Cashmere said:

They're rightly criticised at times but Sky deserve huge credit for this segment.

I'd be happy to watch an hour of Wells & Lomax on the touch screen every pre-game Monday Night Football style.

 

Just logged into the thread to see if this appeared. If it did not, then I was going to start a dedicated thread just for this.

Absolutely brilliant analysis and insight. 

[Saint Toppy]

On 11/03/2022 at 21:03, Just Browny said:

Completely arbitrary ######. It was about 5 minutes difference between the same two offences.

Actually it was over 20mins between the team warning and Saints next getting penalised for offside. Williams got binned because Wire were offside twice within the following 5 minutes.

[Saint Toppy]

On 11/03/2022 at 21:44, Dave T said:

Why isn't the marker allowed to tackle the arm of the dummy half? At what stage did that become a penalty, or has it always been the case? 

That's been a rule for a long time, the marker can't reach around at dummy half and interfere with him passing the ball. The only time the marker can tackle the dummy half is if he runs away from the PTB position.

[Saint Toppy]

On 11/03/2022 at 23:34, WN83 said:

I’ve watched the first 4 weeks of the season thinking it’ll be a walk in the park for Saints this year but tonight I finally felt like there was some holes there. It was a weird game. To think it finished with such a big gap was strange. They’re like a boa constrictor Saints, they just strangle you and pick up the scraps but if a side can get them panicking, they’ll be a shot. Wire wasted there shot to do that in the first 20 mins. 

I think one of the big differences this year from the Saints teams before them is their intensity. Saints have often played at a high tempo but not consistently throughout a game, and that drop off has often led to points being conceded and a period of domination from the opposition. This year they seem to be able to keep that high intensity for the full 80mins and the opposition just can't match it.

The Wire game was the perfect example of this with Wire also playing at that high intensity in the opening 15-20mins, but they then dropped off and despite being down to 12men Saints continued at that intensity and Wire just couldn't keep up.

 

[Human Punk]

On 12/03/2022 at 11:20, Dave T said:

I don't know what's happened to Philbin who is a shadow of his former self, but we need some impact players instead of a load of back rowers who go about their business efficiently. We've failed our first two real tests miserably. 

 

To be fair, Philbin used to be almost suicidal in his approach to the game, using himself as a human crash test dummy. It was very effective, but I can't blame him if he's decided that it's not sensible or even feasible to keep going with that style of play.

[Dave T]

44 minutes ago, Human Punk said:

To be fair, Philbin used to be almost suicidal in his approach to the game, using himself as a human crash test dummy. It was very effective, but I can't blame him if he's decided that it's not sensible or even feasible to keep going with that style of play.

I agree with that, Adrian Morley really adapted his game as he got older, but he adapted into a slightly different style really effective prop forward. 

Philbin isn't effective at all. I hope he finds an effective way of playing, because I'm not sure he brings loads to the team right now and that's a huge shame.