1. Lomax
2. Charnley
3. Goulding
4. Percival
5. Makinson

6. Hampshire
7. Walsh

8. Amor
9. Roby
10. Flower
11. Sia
12. Farrell
13. O'Loughlin

14. Taylor
15. Walmsley
16. Masoe
17. Crapilorum/Lance

About half and half for me.

Is the lack of passion down to the coach or the players themselves? Bowen has never played in a Saints-Wigan before and he looked more fired up than any of our homegrown players. Brown needs to realise that treating Good Friday as 'just another 2 points' is a huge mistake.

It's bigger than that, it's the whole culture of the club that needs to improve if we're ever going to win a trophy again. With Wigan it isn't the players as they can virtually all change and they play the same. It's not Wane particularly as all he's doing it continuing the cynical, ultra aggressive gameplan Maguire started. Although Maguire added a lot to it, Wigan's way has always been there. They are, as a club, more committed to success than we are, more committed to preparation, more committed to training and it shows on the field.

Our culture is someway behind Wigan's. It's always been about attacking rugby and exciting the crowd. We suffered a lot over the last 7 years as consecutive coaches tried to change that and the rugby by numbers approach felt out of place, it just wasn't Saints. Our period of success in SL came when we had players who were superior in skill and athletic ability than the opposition, combined with a 'never beaten' attitude. We don't have the first of those now.

Wigan's superior attitude and culture would quite well stem from them being fully professional decades before everyone else. But it's not something we'll be able to catch up with over the short term, it'll take a long time for us to match them or Leeds.

Can't believe Brown came out with that. KC and Rush must have cringed!

Laxity and apathy?

So your squad is better, but the players aren't. That clears it up!

Another myth!

Is it balls.

These team comparison arguments are boring as hell. It means absolutely sod all and some our fans comments are cringeworthy.

Squad on paper arguments are worthless, it's simply if you win or lose. This time we lost, so we can't really say too much else as it's irrelevant.

I'm not sure about this passion argument either. We just didn't play well. End of. The winning team will always appear to have more passion than the losing team. That's blindingly obvious. We just didn't play well and that result has been coming for the past couple of weeks. Nothing about passion for me.

Lomax
Charnley
Goulding
Bateman
Makinson/Swift/Burgess
Green
Walsh
Flower
McLlorum/Roby
Amor
Farrell
Soliola
O'Loughlin

Roby/McLlorum
Walmsley
Taylor
Pettybourne

not a bad side at all that!
I'd definitely have Roby over MM, and maybe Percival over Goulding but theres always going to be some different opinions

With all due respect you don't consistently beat a team by only having 2 better players and 15 worse ones...no matter how good the coach or tactics! There's bias and there's blindness. May I respectfully suggest you're suffering from the latter. If you seriously think Scott Taylor, Josh Charnley (Current England international and the league's top try scorer btw), Liam Farrell or Bateman for example wouldn't make your team you're seriously deluded! I also think, as good as Lomax is, you'd definitely accommodate a genuine world class talent like Bowen. He's been among the top 5 NRL fullbacks for over a decade now and, contrary to the obvious wishes your side of the hill, he's now showing that he has brought enough of that form over to be a sensation in Superleague. You've already mentioned O'Loughlin and Green and I very much doubt you would turn your noses up at Burgess if he became available too!

As a Wigan fan I could also add that Flower, Pettybourne and Crosby would walk into your team ahead of the pudding that is LMS but I accept that you may feel differently.

What I will say, however, is that you seriously need to stop believing the ridiculous comments being made about 'being better on paper' and take a leaf out of your coaches book and recognise the truth. If you were genuinely better you would regularly beat us. You don't. That, quite frankly, settles the argument.

Unlike Masoe who seems to have the carpet under his jersey.

Well argued but you're probably wasting your time. As my nan used to say, 'Tha cawn't put owt weer there is nowt!'!

I miss my nan!

I'm sure you do, given the likelihood she was also your mum, sister and mother of your six-toed offspring.

We have a big rugby league rivalry with Wigan. We want to beat them every time we play them...however, apart from that, they're our neighbours and like it or not, we're pretty much cut from the same cloth. It is possible to have a healthy rivalry without calling them inbred.

Wash thy mouth out, heretic!

Sorry mate

God somebody Wigan must have seriously tormented you as a child. wonder why you got banned the first time.

I know we can't always expect interesting debate on these boards as there are as many idiots as there are good posters but do yourself a favour mate and grow up. You're making yourself look a complete retard with these posts. It might be funny once but you're beginning to sound like a kid and his favourite 'knock knock' joke!

I reckon he probably got fingered by Kelvin Skerrett.

I'll add this, which hopefully doesn't hold too much bias and isn't too twisted by the disappointment of a derby victory.

Wigan were eating up the yards in the middle of the park. The ability to paly your part in a quicker, more organised defensive line to stop this is not classed as an individual skill, nor is it really something that is discussed when comparing players abilities, but it plays a massive part in the out come of the game. We have struggled to restrict other top teams, even in the victory against Leeds.
We've also struggled to dictate the speed of the oppositions PTB, which given the impressive way our starting front row has generally performed going forward, can't be down to a lack of physicality.
Add to that our defending out wide is very inconsistent.
That's 3 team factors that play a massive part in victory/defeat that are not really discussed when comparing individual players. 3 factors that you have us licked on.

Your mention of LMS may be a key to one of our problems. He can be absolutely awesome - for instance, the second half of last season he was immense, but at the moment he looks like a right southern pansy. Similarly, Jordan Turner has shown some absolutely great ability in the opening games, but is way off the mark currently. Could we be guilty of disregarding consistency when evaluating the ability of our players?
We have been very excited about our young, talented backline, but a major factor in our initial glee was the contribution of Percival, who's been missing for a while now.

Another thing Wigan have is better balance. They have a standoff, which we're still sorely lacking. Bar his wonder game against Leeds, Hohaia is a poor choice at 6 and stifle our ball going wide. Something that does not happen to other good teams.
They also have, as Saddo pointed out, Sean O'Loughlin. A wonderfully talented player in his own right, he also brings leadership, physicality which resonates through the team. John Wilkin essentially looks like the schoolboy version of him. The closest thing we seem to have is Amor, who's carries in heavy traffic are a real lift. We have Walmsley too, who's been incredible at times (if you forget those silly errors), but all in all we need to compliment impact forwards like Walmsley and Masoe with grafters and ours, Sia and Amor aside, are either too light (Boof), still a bit young (Richards, Thompson) or too work shy (LMS).

We have some real strengths, but the gaps we have seem to really/really drag the rest right down when things aren't going right. This derby defeat is a real disappointment for the Saints fans, hopefully come the end of the year we will have learnt from games like this, filled in our gaps by developing the youngsters and ironed out the creases in our team characteristics.

Very well summarised.

I will add, that I think we've been very naive since the mid 2000's with regard wrestling being introduced to the game. Part of me still thinks as a team we want to play quick free flowing rugby (which is absolutely great and fine by me) so jump out of tackles, assuming the opposition with show us respect and do the same - this simply doesn't happen and we always struggle with a slower game, which Wigan are very good at ensuring. (That's no criticism of Wigan, it's a crucial part of the game now, and we struggle with it massively) - we have the physicality to win collisions and be dominant in tackles, but we don't use that as an advantage