Who? never heard of em!!

I can actually see us losing to Cas more than losing to Wigan. All the players will be up for the Wigan game and I expect it to be a right ding dong. But Cas , well I think they will stroll it against Wakey and be ready to go on Monday.

If we pick up anymore injuries it could be the under 18's v cas on Monday. I would expect Eastmond to play cas though, Can't see Simmons risking Lomax in back to back games with the rest of the season to come.

A true believer, couldn't have put it better myself

From a Wigan point of view, this is the game of the season! Glad to have a good Friday game at home for a change.

I'll stick my neck out and say Wigan by 12. This IMO will be the game that gets our season going.....hopefully!

I'm kind of relieved you managed to beat HKR last weekend - I'd be extremely weary of the wounded beast if you were going into the derby on the back of a losing run.

If we can get 2 of Jammer, Perry and Clough on the squad, then I'll be happy, although I'm worried about our lack of long kicking without Gaskell - look out for Roby taking sme of that responsibiilty and kicking out of dummy half.

Its a strange one for me. We've been playing very well, but I can't have faith that we'll be able to sustain our high level against one of the top teams until I see it. I can imagine it going a few different ways on Friday.

Exactly my thoughts - we haven't beaten any of the other teams in the top 5 yet.

A good run against some pretty dismal teams doesn't have me thinking we're ready to turn over the big boys given our injuries/absences in key positions.

I think we'll lose by 6-10 points on Friday unfortunately, but we certainly have a decent chance of grabbing the points.

We ain't the team from last year...yet, we gave shown glimpses here and there. I worry about our home form, we seem to perform better when it's backs against the wall type games. I can see now that Maguire has announced that he's going we may get that attitude of 'Do it for madge' which may get us up for all games.....again hopefully

To be honest, I think the way that players like Soliola (especially), Moore and McGennis have been supporting our props, we have the potential of really taking it to them up the middle. The last 3 games have seen us dominate physically, so we need to at least get the upper hand in the rough and tumble.
I'll hope for Meli to come back and slot into the centre position. I'm looking forward to seeing more of Makinson in the future, but for this match, Meli's physical presence would be a welcome sight.

Our completion rate has been very good of late, so that should help us immensely, but the lack of long kicking worries me - perhaps the extra practice the lads will have this week will help.

However, if Wigan do pull their together, their experience as a team should pull them through against our rag-tag bunch of kids. I'd suggest from a neutral point of veiw that home advantage should tip the odds to Wigan.

Think you have pretty much nailed it there.

I do have a sneaky feeling we will be seeing Eastmond at some point over easter.....

If he's committed, then I have no problem with that.

Easier to play Eastmond in the away game, based on the amount of stick he is copping at home. But then again this is no run of the mill away game.

I've been trying to convince myself that its just 2 points, but i cant. THE derby is much more than that

Agree 100%

Well, we have already come back to draw against one of the 'top teams'! We lost to Wire, granted, but I for one was relieved we did. We can now just view that as another fixture rather than the big hyped up hoodoo thing it had become. With our depleted resources, though, I don't hold out much hope for us. I think we could match them with a team just missing one or two (assuming they weren't all our halfbacks!) but not with eight missing as seems likely. We don't have the depth of squad even of last season and so a high number of injuries over a significant period this season will seriously hamper our ambitions IMO.

Our home form sucks, I think it's lost 6 of the last 8, here's hoping we turn it around on Friday but I'm not holding my breath. I wish we were at your place!

We don't have a place

With us just having won just 4 of 15 Easter Super League derbies against St Helens (1998, 2003, 2005, 2010) Its about time we started to pull this poor record back.

(info supplied by Bilko)

Neither do they











sorry, couldnt help it!

Oh yes.

It's derby week, bring it on.

Yep, although you'd HOPE the fans would lay off considering we're playing Wigan. 20,000 Wiganers will be booing our lads, we don't need another 5,000 Saints fans doing it aswell.

I'm hoping Clough, Meli and Graham will be ok to play (and maybe Perry). Meli to Centre and Wheeler to 6 would solve the problem and we wouldn't have to worry about Eastmond playing and this potential issue.

No case to answer, free to play.

I think that's the issue.

CONSPIRACY!

Lodging sucks!!

Any injury/team news from of the lump?