Once again we lose a close game by keeping it to a forward battle through out the game. How much good ball did Mcdonnell, Turner and Percival get all night ? None.

Walsh and Burns just hitting the forwards with flat passes and short balls. Like reading a book. Only time we shifted it was 5th and once again we looked dangerous.

That game despite the drama at the end was absolutely shocking for skill set by both teams.

Less tries from kicks and more skill and pace needed from the backs.

If swift hadn't used wd40 instead of stick spray on his hands, this would have helped

Why spread it wide when you have players like Swift and Dawson on the wings? Might as well form the scrum first.

There was nothing wrong tactically tonight. We did well in spells, but made so, so many mistakes and came up with some awful execution. Swift cost us a lot, Burns needs to pack in the daft kicks and LMS needs to cut out the penalties. We're hammered on penalty counts on a regular basis yet we still insist on giving the ref the ammo.

Could you enlighten us more? Both sides put enormous pressure on their opposites and the skill levels from both sides were amazing under such pressure.
Would you have preferred both teams to play 5 drives and a kick?

i cant believe kc had richards on the bench and not savelio..if it carries on he'll want a move!

To be fair, I thought the first half we did well (Swift's mistakes excepted). We built pressure, dominated the ground, and had their pack under the cosh. Forwards were running good lines and Walsh was hitting them with good ball. In fact, I thought those tactics were the right ones against Cas, because Cas's threequarters are on average significantly bigger and faster than ours, and with Webster and Shenton very strong defensive centres, Percival and Turner were never going to get much space. Maybe if we had Makinson out there, you'd have spun it out a bit more, but with Swift and Dawson, any passing move to the wings was going to end up in touch - as it did several times. We have a problem at Saints in that our backs are very small and not very fast compared to most SL teams. Only Turner has size, but he's more of a tank than a racing car, and even the smaller ones are not particularly fast, as we've seen several times this season when our lads have just been completely unable to catch up a whole range of ball-carriers even over long distances. We keep it in the forwards because that's where our relative strength is, and that works most of the time.

The loss in the second half came about because Cas's pack got back on top of our forwards. We were struggling to make yards, and their kick returns were much stronger than ours. We were quite lucky to still be in it with 5 minutes to go, particularly as our discipline was terrible. Those penalties for holding down were just stupid. Getting caught offside when you've got your opponents stuck in their twenty should be an automatic fine for the player concerned from the club management, in my view - it's just unprofessional. LMS must have given away at least 4 penalties on his own. And of course Saints had a collective brainfart of the sort I haven't seen for some time : Swift robbing the ball rather than just holding it while the carrier went into touch (I hope he's ok, but he had a shocker tonight - absolute shocker); LMS annoying the officials with his gamesmanship, which included taking a winning situation when he won the ball from the drop-out, and turning it into a losing situation by dicking about instead of playing the ball; Roby's butterfingers at the scrum; Burns's kick to gift Holmes 80 metres; Percival's completely unnecessary and obvious sin-bin-worthy flop, and so on. Properly rubbish. Cunningham needs to give them a kick up the backside.

These games happen, from time to time. As long as they don't happen too often, then it's ok. Ugly and frustrating to watch, though.

Basic errors that you dont see in junior rugby by both teams. I mean SKY bigging up Roberts and Carney i have never seen players drop as many balls as these 2 in a full 80 mins both absolutely shocking. Roby kicking out on full, knocking on at base of scrum, people feigning injury, no line breaks through great skill. Just an all round poor standard game

Good post and pretty much sums it up.

If ever there was a game that got away from us it was this one.

Quite comfortable at HT - we should have been further ahead.

Then in the second half we decide to try to defend a lead and the forwards sort of give up, Cas speeded up their game and we are gasping for air. LMS tries farting about burns tries to cheat and we lose all composure and you could just see it would end in tears.

Not enough respect for an excellent attacking opposition.

Not the best of performances, poor handling errors etc but it's a tough league. Cas are in great form. No shame in losing to a last second drop goal. Good to see Walsh & Greenwood back on the pitch. Hope Shannon & Swift are both ok.

Their backline was Roberts, Carney, Shenton, Webster and Solomona. Ours was McDonell, Swift who was having a shocker, Turner, Percy and Dawson. Our pack is our strength...why would we not keep it as a forward battle?