Beaten by the better team on the night? Without doubt! Are Saints a pretty special team? undoubtedly!!!
After showings like that, it’s not easy to write these Diary’s at all, for whilst you all try and forget about it, I have to endeavour to explain how I feel about a performance that is, quite frankly, pretty hard to make any excuses for.
You know, Rugby League is a pretty simple game, often over complicated by the so called ‘experts’ whilst, for me, an ordinary fan, it’s obvious that on Friday one team just wasn’t good enough and has to learn two very basic lessons very quickly. Firstly, when you have the ball you have to endeavour to, at the very least, keep it to the end of the set, whilst when you are defending you have to try to get through 6 tackles without conceding a penalty or a six again. Possession is everything and as I say, the game is that simple and if you can do those two things consistently, then you always have a chance of winning. It’s not rocket science, but at present we are just piling pressure on ourselves because we ain’t doing either. Our discipline is progressively crumblingand so as a consequence, we are playing more and more of thegame in our own half.
On Friday we were second best throughout, but it was bound to happen wasn’t it? We watched on as a tired and listless FC team played out our worst performance of the season against a red-hot Saints side, hell bent from the off on retribution after their loss in Catalan. In essence they had the game won by half time. We simply didn’t get off the bus, we started too sluggishly and once behind, our mistakes ensured that we would never get back into it.
Still knacked after a massive defensive stint on the back of more mistakes and conceded penalties at Leeds, we simply weren’t physical enough. What’s more, our discipline is a now a real issue and if we could just halve those misdemeanoursand errors, we would exert so much more pressure in games.
It’s been gradually getting worse since the Salford game and on Friday the opposition recognised that, played to it and in a nut shell Saints taught us a lesson. They started strongly, grabbed the initiative and controlled the game, in fact the urgency and wanting they showed in doing that, meant that they probably played us at our own game!!
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