There were some poor unforced errors fielding kicks, but I thought most of the spilt balls in possession were on things like crash balls or trying to pass the ball long to the centres to get around Saints' massively offside defence. When those balls stuck we were getting some real success at cutting through Saints. Much better to keep trying that than to try and plough through the congested middle like we've been doing for long enough with no joy.

Sums it up perfectly for me

Sounds daft, but we were the best side, tonight, bet we made miles more yards and breaks than saints, but fair play to Saints, they played the basics and got the win, if we made half the mistakes we did, then we would have won comfy, some real basic errors tonight. Talanoa had a really strange game , made some really poor errors, but caused so many problems with his running game. Played some really good rugby at times an very strong defence. Need to deal with kicks better as we looked poor under the high ball mainly the wingers, Lineham must come on for Micheals.



Enjoyed the game and some real positive moments , but disappointed with the defeat.



One last thing we must improve our backing up particularly when Pryce runs.

Pryce is quality.

The Saints players may feel the hits but they still got the 2 points and that's all that matters, think many on here are overrating our performance it was better and more entertaining than the dirge we've seen at home so far, but its still a long way off where we should be

Outstanding tonight. Constantly probing, and the best half back on display.

No lack of effort from Sneyd either.

They got the points but imo that saintteam tonight was dull and unimaginative, two kicks beat us, strange decisions to kick for goal in the second half after 3 sets attacking our line

Shows just how far off the required standard it was that it has probably improved tenfold but still has plenty more to do.

.....refs have been robbing us for forty years....pathetic. The reality is....

The 2 points are not all that matters. They weren't all that mattered after the Salford game, either:





IMO, nobody is rating our performance as anything special. People are just acknowledging that the team are at least now trying to play rugby, which is something plenty of us (including you) have been complaining about. It's movement in the right direction, so surely that's a good thing?



Clamouring for a better style of rugby and then complaining when the team try to provide it and don't instantly produce champagne rugby is unrealistic and unfair, IMO. There's bound to be teething troubles with such a dramatic change.

Frustrating yes, but certainly a more entertaining brand of rugby to watch.

Maybe I'm been over critical but does anyone think we actually won the forward battle tonight?

Yes they played the ref very well and layed offside but thought saints had better defensive line speed and aggression in the tackle for most of the match. We only seemed to step up to their level in the last 10mins in this respect. For most of the match we found it very difficult to make the hard yards down the middle. Credit to saints they did their homework on us and snuffed out Paea's usual effectiveness with their tactics. I think in some respects we were forced to play a more expansive game down the edges because they won the battle down the middle for 75% of the game. We are still lacking a bit of size and nastiness when up against the top teams even though you couldn't fault the likes of Ellis, Mini, and Sa tonight which makes the result tonight disappointing as you couldn't fault the effort on show.

Radford said a lot of the going out wide was on account of the ref not controlling the 10. Not exaggerating but the 10 in 1st half when under the cosh was ridiculous. Forwards being hit simultaneously as they caught the ball at times so the chance of forwards making any impact in those circumstances is nearly impossible . Joke ref