Only way you could say who is the best team is by seeing whos won the most games over a season and whos won the most head to heads against each other.

Last season Saints won both. HTH

and lost the one that really counted

H-T-H

So that makes you the better team on the night. Which as been pointed out a number of times. No arguments from anyone.

St Helens are the better team.

they were on friday, no arguements from me there. however you started about league games last season

who are the bigger chokers? Leeds or Saints?

You decide who is the best team in our competition by a game at Old Trafford in October. If you look at replays of the Saints dressing room last year and the year before the look on James Graham's face will tell you this is the case. Just like the the look on Jamie Peacock's would have told you in '02.

But you know this already. It just takes you co*ks about 4 months to re-create the delusion that you are still the Champions based on a set of criteria that you have to modify each year we beat you.

Here's an interesting thought, but have Saint Ellins ever won a GF after meeting Leeds in the playoffs? Maybe they have maybe they haven't?

We was the best team in super league last year.

Unfortunately the Grand Final doesent show it!

And how did you do in English ?

Nobody, except deluded Scousers, remember the losers. Everyone remembers the Winners.

Leeds Rhinos.

"First is everywhere. Second is nowhere."

Given tonights tragic news....who cares

It’s like having a big red button labelled “Do not Press” – what you gunna do?

Exactly, brings it home that its just a game

right to clear up the grand final is the most important fixture of the superleague season, the best team in superleague will win, it int our fault that in the big important matches we beat you and mabye if you want to win the superleague again?, try turning up on grand final night instead opf moaning and looking for 'revenge' in the weekly rounds!

Leeds were the best int Grand Final.......................end off.

Saints were best in weekly rounds and Challenge Cup!

The weekly rounds are nothing but a qualifying period.

Well done to St Helens on being the best at qualifying but not finishing the job off.

Has it ever occurred to you thick scousers that Leeds took it easy in the qualifying rounds, knowing that as long as a top 2 finsih was achieved that they could turn it on in the play-offs?

Saints like many of their scouse brothers obviously hold hubcaps to be worth much more than they really are. Must be why you nick so many of them

maybe at half time he tried to dye his hair black?

How on earth there can even be an argument about this frankly amazes me!

In the years pre playoffs, every league match mattered, and a team was quite rightly judged on their final league position. However, nowadays, going that extra yard to try to finish 1st instead of 2nd is rather pointless, and doesn't tend to carry any reward (as Saints have proven for the past 2 years - unless of course they class the hubcap as a "reward"!!)

From day one of a Super League season, one thing matters above all else - a win in the grand final - that's what all teams aspire to, and what all fans hope to experience. How can any team be judged on their league position when some league games are not taken as seriously as others? For example, if a team is a week or two away from the playoffs, and they're, say, 14 points down in the 2nd half, do they give everything they have to try and win the game, or do they look at the bigger picture, coast towards the end of the game, and save their energy for more important games? The perfect example here is the beating Leeds took from Saints in the playoffs last year - if it was vital for Leeds to win that game, would it have panned out the same way? Or was the fact that Leeds coasted through the 2nd half down to the fact that they knew they'd probably get another crack at Saints, in a game when it REALLY mattered, in a couple of weeks time? Leeds chose to look at the bigger picture, and we all know how that turned out!

So, in reality, league position and regular season win/loss records would only mean anything if every team gave everything they had in every league game. As long as there are play offs, that will never happen! So, for all the Saints fans trying to kid themselves that they were the best team last year, if you were to be offered a straight swap - the hub cap and your regular season win/loss record against Leeds in exchange for a reverse of the Grand Final result - how many seconds would it take you to bite our hands off??!!!

WELL SAID

Good post...

Just to add, is it really worth playing 28 games to qualify for a one off match?

Depends if you win......

ah, now that is a different thing.however we all play by the rules the RFL set

I have to admit, it has somewhat diluted the importance of league matches and the season in general. For example, noone on here seems massively bothered about losing to Saints on Friday. Why? Because we know we can and will play a lot better when it really matters, and because we know the odd two points here and there don't matter in the slightest.

Of course it'd have been great to win, but losing matches here and there throughout the regular season never stopped us winning the major prize in 2007 & 2008. We know that, given the depth of our squad, it's going to take a big effort from someone to push us out of the top 2, and an even bigger effort to deny us another Grand Final appearance.

So, it's that old debate again - is the regular season a bit of a drawn out waste of time? As Bradford proved in 2005, a team can be average at best for most of the year (didn't we spank them 3 times in the league that year?), then come good in the last month or two and walk away with the prize. Granted there were mitigating circumstances, notably Saints' injuries that year, but the fact was that the team who peaked at the right time became champions, despite being garbage for most of the season.

The only league games I get really up for nowadays are those against Saints (because they're the only team to be on a par with us throughout a full season) Bradford (because Leeds Bradford games will always mean something, no matter where each team is in the league) and Wigan (because they usually lift themselves massively against us in league matches, which always adds that "uncertainty" factor to the build up). I Hate to say it, but beyond that, not many other games get me that excited nowadays.

That would depend if you'd call Leeds getting beat 10 - 42 in one of the two fixtures at Headingley as handing out a spanking.



Terry Newton.