Souths : Sun Feb 22, 2015 8:35 pm  

What a great side they look and whilst we were never this good we had many of the traits of this side under Maguire. Some of those look to be slowly fading away though which is a real worry.

-Controlled aggression

-Scrambling line defence

-Full on kick chase

-Low error count

We look so sloppy at the moment and the players should be shown the video from Souths tonight to try and retrain them in to our old style of play.

Re: Souths : Sun Feb 22, 2015 9:04 pm  

And not one sign of dirty play.

It seems so long ago.

Re: Souths : Sun Feb 22, 2015 9:18 pm  

I too can't help but watch that game without feeling a sense of nostalgia for all the reasons you have mentioned.

The NRL teams have just done the basics of RL, but to the highest possible standard. No errors. Keep your discipline. Let your big blokes work their way up the field (not wildly putting shift plays on in your own half) who provide the platform for the backs to wreak havoc with brilliantly executed plays. The kicking game of all 3 Aussie sides was vastly superior too.

The sad thing is had Wire/Wigan kept their discipline with the ball, retaining posession and therefore not burning their energy - I think both sides would have won.

Souths on the other hand were on a different planet to all 5 of the other sides.

Re: Souths : Sun Feb 22, 2015 9:49 pm  

They was good but saints was very very poor. Outclassed!

Re: Souths : Sun Feb 22, 2015 9:55 pm  

I was impressed by their game management, that drop goal really killed off any chance of a fight back

They're not bad are they? Saints were poor and miss Walsh but blimey, different planet.

Re: Souths : Sun Feb 22, 2015 9:56 pm  

If anything watching Saints get absolutely and deservedly outclassed just made me sad.

Madge set us up for a prolonged period of success and it's all slowly being picked away.

Wane has to take the lion share of the blame due to the way he's flooded the side with kids and moved away from that low error, low penalty, nasty defence that we had. He purposely give it the big i am when he took over and, imo, he's had 1 good season out of 3 in charge.

IL has to also take the blame for letting a special group of players slowly break apart.

What i wouldn't give to see an experienced team playing that brutal defence week in week out.

Re: Souths : Sun Feb 22, 2015 9:59 pm  

Just be thankful that Sam Burgess wasn't playing as well. There is no point the SL clubs trying to find excuses. The best thing they can do is learn from the experience and come back better for the experience. If that happens then SL as a whole will benefit.

Re: Souths : Sun Feb 22, 2015 10:23 pm  

sergeant pepper wrote:

If anything watching Saints get absolutely and deservedly outclassed just made me sad.

Madge set us up for a prolonged period of success and it's all slowly being picked away.

Wane has to take the lion share of the blame due to the way he's flooded the side with kids and moved away from that low error, low penalty, nasty defence that we had. He purposely give it the big i am when he took over and, imo, he's had 1 good season out of 3 in charge.

IL has to also take the blame for letting a special group of players slowly break apart.

What i wouldn't give to see an experienced team playing that brutal defence week in week out.

Maguire set up the systems, but had no interest in playing the youngsters.

He threw away any chance of winning the league his second year by flogging the players to win the Challenge Cup.

Great coach, but he's not a saint.

Wigan are succeeding under difficult circumstances - when your 20yo winger would rather love off to Australia rather than establish himself in SL what can you do? Youngsters are the way forward, as Saints/Warrington/Leeds are finding now - we've just been ahead of the curve as usual.

Re: Souths : Sun Feb 22, 2015 10:25 pm  

Wigg'n wrote:

And not one sign of dirty play.

It seems so long ago.

What?
Get reality check up with your doctor or start to watch football.

Re: Souths : Sun Feb 22, 2015 10:26 pm  

P-J wrote:

Maguire set up the systems, but had no interest in playing the youngsters.

He threw away any chance of winning the league his second year by flogging the players to win the Challenge Cup.

Great coach, but he's not a saint.

Wigan are succeeding under difficult circumstances - when your 20yo winger would rather love off to Australia rather than establish himself in SL what can you do? Youngsters are the way forward, as Saints/Warrington/Leeds are finding now - we've just been ahead of the curve as usual.

This