You are right in a sense but also very wrong. If you take the horrific standard of Super League at the moment, we're not that bad. If you compare us to Wigan, it's primarily a mental issue that prevents us competing with them. They out enthuse us and are too aggressive for us. That could be changed with a new coach and a new emphasis. But what Wigan and the likes of Leeds and Warrington, the teams that win the trophies, have that we don't is the individual stars. It's players like McGuire, Burrow, Tomkins, Briers, Westwood that raise their side above and win them trophies. We don't have that. Our only top level player is Roby and he's so easily shut down that he's no real benefit to us at all in the big games as the pack is always trounced and there is no momentum for him to work off.

To win another trophy (Barring a ridiculously easy run to a CC Final against another mediocre team) we need a new fullback, a new half back and a new prop. And we need to find some individual quality from somewhere as well. It sounds easy, but it's not likely that we'll do it anytime soon.

Re-read the very first sentence of my post, then re-think your post. At 33-32 there is little validity to any claims that it was a high quality game. I've praised Tim Smith and your creative trio and your attack in general. The defending on show, from both teams, was incredibly poor.

Entertaining? Yes, I said that in the first sentence. Poor quality? Most definitely.

I coudnt give a **** about wigans squad and what the hell as the comparison to our game with wolves and wigans game with wolves got to do With it? Wigan have tonked us 3 times this year!

You really do think all things saints are great don't you? You can't see thru your saints tinted specs just how poor we've become over the last 5 years. We are very lucky the the standard had dropped or we'd be way off the pace!

I Can picture you sat in your living room with saints wallpaper, looking at the pictures on the wall of scully, KC and longy, eating your tea on your saints plates, using saints knives and fork, with a saints tray on your knee while wearing you saints slippers.

Your saints PJs neatly folded on your saints bed covers, in your box room with saints wallpaper, the light on the room coming from your saints lamp, your book collection consisting of saints played biogs, you'll sit there all might writing out your greatest saints 17, using your saints pad, saints pen that you keep in your saints pencil case.

When most men have naughty magazines and naughty DVDs under the bed, you have saints programes (sticky pages), and old saints vids, the saints bid of wide to west is now a bad picture as its been played that often on them lonley nights when you've woke thinking off saints.

...but we were 20 minutes and a few incredibly unluckily timed injuries away from winning the GF last season with exactly the same dearth of "stars" (Graham excepted, but he's not a "match-winning" player per se in the sense you're alluding to).

Discuss.

And, as ever, where are these "stars" going to come from? Most of the players you refer to are approaching the end of their careers, and Wire, Leeds, Wigan et al will suffer as badly in trying to replace them as we have with Long, Scully etc. Superleague is gradually becoming a star-less environment - it's currently acting rather like the "Accelerating Universe" theory in fact. It may appear to superficially be growing bigger and more expansive, but it's stars are gradually fading and it will eventually consist of just black holes and clouds of gas.

Exactly true, couldnt have put it any better myself!

Good grief, man... You really do need to get out more....

It's called "parody" by the way, but your self-parody rather makes mine redundant...

We had Graham, prop box ticked. Leader box also ticked massively. We had Gaskell and Lomax playing well and combining in the halves, not that Kiwi joker we've had ruining things all season. Even then we relied on a batting collapse by a Wigan team with a departing coach to get there.

My point is that if we slowly get slightly worse every season, we're not really moving forwards are we?

I'm out now mate, these new things called iPhones allow me to go on the net while on the move.

I bet you've got a Saints mouse mat?

I'd love an iPhone but work will only give me some godawful Nokia and I refuse to carry 2 phones... My street cred really diminishes each time I whip it out of my trousers and show it to the cool kids. I feel so much less a man for it...



I don't actually use a mouse mat thanks (the arm of my nicely appointed Ikea sofa does quite nicely), but just for you I'll go looking for one in the smoking ruins of the club shop after you've finished leading that angry mob to burn LP down to the ground for not showing enough "ambition" in their signings. It's the only fate that would be worthy of them, damn their penny-pinching hides....

It's boring now and we ain't going to agree, do lets just leave it.

Be careful Pete or smallhampton will add you to his foes list.

Ikea Sofa ? This guy's got class

What a monumental bore you are - I'm so glad I'm not you

You wish you were me. Two random attacks with insults and it turns out I was right all along