St Helens Wolf wrote:
Congratulations to Wigan, the points went to the better team on the night. As to our performance, some lessons to be learned.
Whilst our bench was the weakest that I’ve seen that is not the reason for our downfall. We were second best from the off and our starting 13 was very nearly full strength. We were only missing Clark (Walker is more than capable of being a starting hooker) and Harrison for whom we had Kasiano. We were simply outplayed by a Wigan team, also missing a few, who handled the conditions better and who out enthused us. The positives for us are that, despite being second best, we clung in there and whether you want to see it as poor finishing or poor officiating we could still have snatched it at the very end.
Let’s hope for some improvement next week against a Saints team that will be desperate for a win. There’s still a long way to go but who could have really imagined that we’d be where we are now based on last year’s performance.
Although Vaughan and Kasiano did start for us, and it did make our initial 13 look strong, both players knew that they were going to play long minutes, with little to no respite from our bench players.
So they would have both been unable to play their usual game from the start and had to conserve their energy to compensate for that.
It would have made more sense to play Matautia at loose forward and play with Maguire at prop, with Kasiano on the bench.
Green is nowhere near ready for Super League and shouldn`t have been selected. Thomas was out 18th man and has held his own as a prop in the games he has played up to now.
Those changes would have given us a far better balanced 17 man squad.
