{"id":687,"date":"2026-09-04T21:24:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T21:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/04\/wilkin-and-jones-buchanan-blast-saints-recruitment-after-historic-playoff-miss\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T21:24:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T21:24:00","slug":"wilkin-and-jones-buchanan-blast-saints-recruitment-after-historic-playoff-miss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/04\/wilkin-and-jones-buchanan-blast-saints-recruitment-after-historic-playoff-miss\/","title":{"rendered":"Wilkin and Jones-Buchanan blast Saints&#8217; recruitment after historic playoff miss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>St Helens have missed the Super League play-offs for the first time in the club&#8217;s history, a milestone that followed a heavy 48-10 defeat at Leigh Leopards on Friday. Former players Jon Wilkin and Jamie Jones-Buchanan were critical of the club&#8217;s performance, specifically targeting recruitment and squad balance.<\/p>\n<p>The analysis came after the match, with both pundits expressing disbelief at how the reigning champions found themselves in the position of missing out on postseason rugby league action.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>St Helens miss playoffs for first time after 48-10 loss to Leigh, with experts citing shocking recruitment and poor squad balance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[318,1597,1596,1420,1418,627,1421,1419],"class_list":["post-687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-football","tag-jamie-jones-buchanan","tag-jon-wilkin","tag-leigh-leopards","tag-rugby-league","tag-sports","tag-st-helens","tag-super-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yovao.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}