8 Rounds In; Here We Go

[FlameThrower]

Just goes to show how critical it was to retain Widdop. Dugan surely will be close to resigning?? What we saw yesterday from Dugan was not a player looking to jump ship??

 

[2010]

Dugan's kick will go down as one of the greatest plays for our club.

 

[Red V for life]

Dugan's kick will go down as one of the greatest plays for our club.

What I loved about it was he had every reason to be nervous, anxious and to approach it with an element of fear. Instead he drilled that ball...absolutely drilled it with everything he had...purposeful and powerful.

Right up there with Piggy Riddell's sideline conversion to beat the Donkeys at Suncorp years ago.

 

[ruthless dragon]

Remember when the "real test" was going to be when we had to play Manly in Brookevale? Then the "real test" was going to be if we could beat the Cowboys. Following that win the "real test" became the Roosters on ANZAC Day. Now that we've held our own (despite losing) in a tough match against one of the competition front-runners, the "real test" is our next game against Melbourne.

When will fans stop looking for chances to declare that our success has just been an extraordinary series of flukes, and accept that we are a good team, deserving of our wins.

Agree 100% this team has the potential to win the 2017 premiership and crawl under a rock the whiners

 

[Saints Forever]

We may lose the next few games in tight contests, however I don't see us crumbling.

Saints may have lost the game against the Roosters however the performance was one worthy of the famous red V.

 

[This Year?]

These next few weeks will show how much character and resolve we have. I hope we don't go backwards after what's been a great start to the season,

 

[possm]

Remember when the "real test" was going to be when we had to play Manly in Brookevale? Then the "real test" was going to be if we could beat the Cowboys. Following that win the "real test" became the Roosters on ANZAC Day. Now that we've held our own (despite losing) in a tough match against one of the competition front-runners, the "real test" is our next game against Melbourne.

When will fans stop looking for chances to declare that our success has just been an extraordinary series of flukes, and accept that we are a good team, deserving of our wins.

I am not so concerned about the loss to the Roosters; we played to the best of our ability and never gave up. We were in it right up until the end. The two things that concern me moving forward are:

The loss of Widdop for potentially 5 games
The burn out of our forward pack

Widdop's replacement is untested as a first grade five-eighth and will require some time to perform well at first grade level. This alone could see us losing a significant number of the 5 games.

The forwards have been doing the tough and heavy work over the first 8 rounds. Their huge effort has led to our success this season. I have noticed that our forwards have maintained their dominance in the first half of the last two games but fallen away somewhat in the second half of each of those two games. With a lack of dominance through fatigue comes errors and penalties which only magnify the problem.

I was hoping to see the halves lift to even another level and more often feed our centres and fullback with ball in space however, our five-eighth is now out for about 5 games and unless his replacement can get Lafai and Dugan more involved in quality space we will struggle. I agree with others on here who have said McCrone needs to take control of the ruck and steer our team around however, he too must feed Aitken and Dugan with quality ball.

I'm sure Melbourne will target our edge defence on both sides of the ruck on Sunday. I hope Mary has a plan to counter this plan.