I don't see you every week of course, but genuinely surprised that you're the most penalised side.

The top sides don't usually get penalised as much because they tend to have more of the ball. Be interested to know if that figure includes 6 again penalties because most Saints fans seem to say they get hammered on those.

Really? My only surprise is that you are surprised



I say most games that I am convinced we love to practise defending with how many penalties we give away.

I think it's as you say, you have a very physical aggressive defence which Woolf knows will likely lead to a few more penalties than he would ideally like but he takes it, because he backs his team to be able to defend those penalties when they have to. And, most often, he's right. Sometimes teams (and individual players, of course) give away more penalties than others because they are undisciplined, and sometimes it's just because they put themselves in those positions more often than others. A team that flies up quickly off the line every tackle is going to get caught offside a few times more than others. Similarly, when Sean O'Loughlin was young and opposition fans complained he did too many high tackles and was therefore "dirty" it didn't bother me. He was a hardworking defender who typically made more tackles than most players so he was bound to get caught out going higher more often than other players who only made a third of the tackles he did.

INOUT

Cheers Brian, edited the thread title now.

Bloody useless RL journalists.

Some interesting stats there. I see Saints are worst on errors too, but I suppose if you see more of the ball than your opponents... Wigan in a decent mid-table spot there.

I loved that Toulouse are top on 40/20's with 8! (who's been kicking them? Corey Norman? He hasn't been there that long, has he?). Wigan have 2, Saints none (bit surprising).

I think what the stats do tell us is that for all we complain about poor discipline, giving away 6-agains is killing Wigan, etc, the truth is that compared to other teams we are pretty good. We are not a dirty side, and our overall discipline is good. We appear to be bottom the league on yellow cards, those stats have down for only 2, but surely that can't be right? Mago got one last week,surely we've had more than one other all season. Saints on 11, Dirty Leeds on 13, Castleford...

I look forward to these salient facts being reflected in future Sky coverage...