Quote batleyrhino="batleyrhino"Here's what happened in my opinion.
Saints were better than we could reasonably expected them to be given the number of players they had missing. The defended competently but we didn't really ask them to do much more than that. Like all Saints teams they looked to play an attractive and expansive game.
We thought we could bully the younger Saints pack and failed to do that. We thought we could play very close to the line and failed to do that as there wasn't sufficient movement from dummy runners meaning we played one out rugby. Our Halves failed to create anything of note in their 40 (I was going to say 20 but it was actually further out than that). We have forgotten how to offload to support players.
Our coach made a blunder in putting Ward at 4, the fact that the kid made 34 tackles simply goes to show he really played in the second row meaning we were a back light. The continual lack of usage of a sub, especially when we have injuries during the game, is a big black mark against us. It does us no favours whatsoever.
There was no lack of heart, a trait you associate with a Leeds team under McDermott, but equally there was no "smarts" on show either, which falls into the same category.
The "last man standing" attitude of this group under the current coaching set up is laudable, but as the halves get slower (we must have the slowest halves in the competition now) we are failing to compensate by playing with more depth.
The start to the season in terms of results and defence have been good, but we are failing to play with much structure in attack and still rely on "miracle plays" from individuals.'"
I agree with some of your points but disagree with your conclusions. This season we have played with more structure on attack and defence and the stats and our backs performance before last night clearly underline that.
Whilst I would have played BJB from the start and would certainly have brought him on to break the stalemate it is wrong to suggest our defeat was Wards fault. It is also wrong of others to keep suggestiong our game plan was wrong. We created more than enough field position and repeat sets to win the game. It was our mistakes (Watkins, Ablett, Kirke, JJB, Hardaker and Sinfield for wrong decisions) and poor finishing that cost us, not the game plan. Once the players take the field it is down to them. If they fail to perform blame the players.
I do not know how late in the day Aiton became ill but the game plan included him at 9 for all or part of the game. Burrow would have played all or at least part of the game in the halves and as you point out it was our half backs that looked pedestrian and failed to create the space that they had been doing in previous games. So although the Saints were without many first teamers we also had a major set back late in the day. This is not making excuses as our experience should have overcome this.
However the great thing about sport is that on the day (night) there can always be upsets. Last night the Saints, young and old, played out of their skins. Wellans totally dominated Hardaker out of our attack and Watkins and the wingers were well closed down too. After our forwards dominated early doors their pack hung in and just kept tackling. All this was helped by slowing down our PTB legally and also illegally IMO. In this area we did not match them and their first try came on the back of a schoolboy howler from Watkins, a lazy get up from Kirke (no worse than Saints were doing all the match) and a rush out from JJB. However it was their quick PTB, despite 4 of our players in the tackle, and Roby's rocket pass that made the try.
Finally it was a great try that won the game for them so this was one that got away but at this stage of the season it is no bad thing to have areas of improvement to work on.
