maguire comes as a very highly rated young australian coach.

tony smith has started to work his wonders at warrington winning the CC last year

watching leeds / st helens GFs is boring as the decline in GF crowds has shown.

both wigan and warrington are the 2 clubs who have promised so much in terms of winning SL yet every year dont.

it wouldnt surprise me to see either team or both finishing in 1st or 2nd place.

both clubs could easily add 5000 to last seasons crowds if things go right on the park.

what is it with you and wigan?

Don't rule us out.

I think we could have a say in the final shake up.

To answer your question..no, no they cant.

tbh i'll be surprised if saints make the final, catalans or wire may get there.

The most "OPEN" soooooooperdoooooper league ever

(again!!!!!) means that it's a Rhino's v Saints GF!!!!

All the bookies seem to go the same way.

I can't really see any alternative but Wigan/Bulls may make a dent with dark horses being Catalans/Wolves.

The rest, IMO are there to make up the numbers.

For the good of the game a Catalans v HKR final would be great but aint gonna happen. ( Maybe the Challange Cup?)

You might get a new GF this year, it is possible.

But I very much doubt Wigan or Wire will finish 1st in the league. Can't see beyond Leeds for that position.

Leeds will walk it. Second is seriously up for grabs and Dally, learn something. There's no way on gods green earth Wire can add 5000 to their crowd average this year. Even if we won the league

i cop so much s**t for bagging clubs, you do have to respect some english RL clubs

i remember on the train up north seeing field after field with soccer posts on it.

as i was approaching wigan i saw a field with RL posts and saw an RL oasis in the desert.

ive got zero interest in seeing saints and leeds in teh SL GF. this was this first year since 2000 i havent watched it cause its same old.

look what brown did for huddersfield. maguire is at least as good as him

Macguire can't even pick a captain!

not in a million years wigan will be nothing but also rans again

if warrington were to add 5000 to their crowds,they would need a bigger stadium.

they have realised that they can't buy trophies anymore, which is payback for murdering the game for the thick end of ten years.

I think St Helens will end the Leeds/St Helens "domination" or more specifically Keiron Cunnigham. I just see them struggling when Cunningham retires. Every time I watch them they are a struggling side when he doesn't play and oppositions best spells in games seem to be when he is having a rest on the bench. Of course he's still there but will his body hold up?

Brilliant.

I think Wigan, Warrington, Bradford and Les Catalans all look much stronger sides. I have reservations about McNamara at Bradford, but their squad on paper looks excellent if you base it on reputation. But form will have the biggest say on how they get on. If Orford and Kearney click they could cause the top two problems.

Hull FC have made some shrewd recruits. They have a strong squad and will be far more competitive next season.

While I think the Wigan period of dominance was not good for the sport, I see no reason to blame them for simply being very, very successful.

They put together some fabulous sides, and fair play to them.

Wigan's dominance was bad for the sport as a fan but good for the profile of the sport. People today still know of Martin Offiah and Ellery Hanley. How many of todays stars will be invited to dance on ice or whatever in ten years time.

I think it will be Wigan's year this year, and for me it won't be the new coach, it will be the new assistant coach, Wane, who will kick some metal into a side that shows promise every year but always goes into the play-offs with too much to do due to a bad start to the season.

Of course, Wakey will beat them in the GF, but Wigan should get there.

Think the answer to the question is NO!



but if the question was can Brown end the leeds/ St Helens domination... then the answer is POSSIBLY!

By buying up everyone, regardless of if they wanted to actually play them?

I do not deny Wigan were a good product to watch, but had it been allowed to continue then the game would have suffered, Warrington are finding that they can only "buy" limited success, likewsie Hull KR bet the farm on playoff glory and it's backfired.

I dont see the big deal about Wigan this year, so far they have signed Deacon who has been terrible for the last couple of years, I saw Chris Thorman outplay him last year FFS.

They also start the season with their best forward IMO, Hock.

Ok they have a young highly rated coach, but he hasnt proved himself or coach at 1st grade yet.

The youngsters have another year, but so do other teams young players.

I think they will be about the same position as last year, as IMO they start the season with a weaker squad and other teams have (on paper) signed well.

I fancy Warrington to finish 2nd this year, they have a great coach and squad.

Catalan will be the biggest challengers this season. Warrington will also do well. I've stopped predicting Saints' downfall as the ast two seasons theyve stemmed the flow and been there or there abouts.

lol do you mean the period it dragged RL out of the dark ages?

Maybe if some other clubs around that time had half of the ambition Wigan showed we wouldn't be so far behind RU?

Still nice 2 see the bitterness is still around almost 15 years later.

If all the other clubs around that time had shown the "ambition" Wigan showed (without a local football team to rent a stadium from when they had to sell their own when their "ambition" left them penniless) we probably wouldn't have pro RL.

Or maybe we should follow the path set down by Saints?? Massive debts and a run down ground? What about the successful Bradford sides effect on the current set up? Success will always catch you up but it’s funny how people don’t mention Bradford’s or Saints time at the top as bad for the game???

At the end of the day people on here come on and claim what Wigan did was bad for RL when in reality it was the best thing to ever happen to the game. I can’t see how a lack of competition is deemed to be Wigan’s fault? Were we supposed to wait for the rest of RL to realise things needed to change? Should the likes of Monie or Lowe not have implemented their ground breaking practices due to the other coaches not being as technically good as them?

I agree that by the end Wigan’s vision to be the best was morphed into something different amd it ultimately led to a massive fall but I still think the success it was bad thing nor at the start was the way they went about achieving it. A few bad decisions caused a hell of a lot of problems i.e the Boston stand going over budget and the excessive way we recruited players i.e. did we really need the likes of Offiah or Paul when we could have had cheaper alternatives who would still have maintained our success?

The success Wigan had could easily have been maintained without half the problems we saw.

I would take issue with the original poster's comment that Wigan promise so much every year in terms of winning SL. Wigan have been very average for a number of seasons now, and the only surprise is that they have done as well as they have, given their pretty ordinary playing roster. I don't see them making the top four this year.