Wigan went pro in 94 so your theory that we won because we was professional flies out the window some what.

I think Stains spent a fortune on Newlove,Oconner,Vautin, etc.Rugby League is over a century old (it didnt start 26 yrs ago)

Leeds went fully pro within the same time frame and won zip.

Don’t confuse the poor chap with facts.



It’s obvious we were full time and everyone else’s squad was filled with miners and mill workers who were subsided a days pay to play on the weekend.



Today where a number of teams can’t afford to utilise the full salary cap and where certain teams have had seasons playing significantly less games than others and refused to release players for internationals is a perfectly level playing field.

Agree, top teams not only spend to the full cap, but take advantage of having up to two marquee players per season whilst other teams may only be able to afford 75-80% of the cap = still not a level playing field. Just need to look at which teams have won the GF since 1998.

As long as it isn't Wigan it's an improvement on how things were when we ruined the game.

Awww bless you.





Hopefully the Wigan players also think this result was due to just missing Walmsley rather than the players clearly switching off for two weeks with Toulouse and Whitehaven to play after whipping everyone else. We left Roby on the bench for 60 minutes - it's clear we went into this game soft and paid the price - fair play to Toulouse. Saying it's because Al didn't play is to massively over-simplify, it was clear from minute one when we didn''t field a kick off then conceded from the first set that we weren't at the races



Attitude was miles off, the same team beats most of SL with their heads switched on, Walmsley or no Walmsley.



We hear about how poor SL is, then on other threads I'm reading you have two players better than Ben Barba! I suppose we'll see how overrated everyone except Walmsley is come Good Friday.

Just hoping on GF we hear (as my somewhat tongue in cheek original post suggested) "Alex go back a yard and play the ball". We probably will see then how far in front of us you are, no arguments you're better than us at the moment but watching Walmsley continually walking off the mark after he's been tackled is annoying as a neutral and infuriating when it's against your team.

If he gets away with it playing for England then that's a different kettle of fish

Disingenuous much?

What’s your thoughts on superleague as a whole? The quality of the other sides in general? Are the usual suspects who challenge for trophies (Wigan, Warrington, Leeds etc) worse than they’ve been at any point in the last decade?!



It really grates on Saints fans when a lack of an injury crisis is brought up or if people say they’re dominating an extremely poor competition and I’d love just one to come out and admit that there are elements of that. It’s not the be all and end all of the success, of course it’s not, but it’s not hurt, much in the same way that having a really strong and settled side going in to all the Covid disruption and the challenges the aftermath of that has brought hasn’t either.

Firstly, the first enforced Covid break in 2020 allowed every team in the league to have a longer pre-season. Any players with injuries, knocks or recovering from operations had longer to recover. Not only Saints benefited from that.



Secondly, we also won the CC in 2021 which meant that we played extra games than any other team apart from Castleford so I'd love someone to supply me with statistics of just how many less games we played overall than other teams.



I don't deny that we have been relatively injury free compared to others but again how much of that is luck? Years of being mostly injury free is luck? I'm not so sure. Look at the mess Wigan made of rushing Bevan French back and the way they managed Burgess. Would Saints S & C team have done the same? Not a chance. I remember under Mick Potter that we had a period of suffering a lot of quad injuries. That was attributed to particular training programs and an obsession of putting size on. Certain teams suffer with certain injuries, it wasn't so long ago that Wigan fans on here were questioning your own S & C team due to the number of hamstring injuries suffered.

We were so lucky with injuries last year we lost our scrum half for the season in the middle of a cup final and played the rest of the season with an academy 7. Maybe other teams just find more excuses when they're missing a few, as we were for chunks of the season, or have worse juniors. Whisper it (as people won't like to hear it) maybe they are even less professional in their preparation or not as fit?



Or maybe the same clubs are unlucky and the same clubs lucky over years and years and conditioning/depth/balanced squad building/junior development has nothing to do with it.

Also lost Bentley for the season from Magic Weekend. He was one of the stand out back rowers that season. Lees with an achilles for 10-12 weeks around that time too.