Quote ="richie166"I stand by what I said. To me Warrington have the best team, then Wigan, then St Helens and then Leeds.'"
Nothing wrong with an opinion, and there's no way of measuring this objectively.
I take a different view, which is that there are four sets of teams in SL. Each team can beat the other teams in its group on any given day, and would be expected to beat the teams in the groups below most of the time, but would only beat teams in the group above on unexpected occasions. Groups are :
Upper - Warrington, Wigan, Leeds, Saints
Middle - Hull, Catalans, Huddersfield, Hull KR
Lower - Salford, Wakefield, Bradford, Castleford
No-hope - Widnes
The question I haven't decided on yet is where London fit. Last year they were clearly in the lower group. This year on paper I'd put them in the middle. But their 3 games so far have been against two top sides who I wouldn't expect them to beat, and one middle side away from home, so the result was not particularly unpredictable. Next week will be an interesting game. It's at home, and if London are genuine middle group, then they have every chance of winning. But then Huddersfield are on form.
A better test I think will be the next two games against Salford and Castleford. If London lose either of those, then they're definitely in the lower group still, IMO. If they win them both, then the claim to middle group remains, but they'd need to win future fixtures against those middle teams, especially at home. Unfortunately, the Salford and Castleford games are followed by Wigan away, so I reckon out of the first 7 games they could easily be on just 2 wins, even if they are in fact now a middle team. The fixtures schedules could give rise to a quite misleading picture.
Jury's out with me at present, but a top 8 finish is still very possible at this stage.
