To 'butcher' a team in a GF you have to make it to the GF in the first place

Oh wait.......................

I think there's a touch of artistic licence here.

A lot of my Saints supporting mates said the same as me pre-Catalan. It looked like one game too far and I think even had we sneaked through you would have had too much strike and pace for us particularly as NK alludes to with players missing.

What I was trying to say was that Saturdays game was more of an arm wrestle rather than Wigan being free flowing in attack. Yes they made the odd clean break but French was very quiet, Field in flashes showed his class but it was Wigan's defence that stood out. That type of game would've suited Saints better, set for set, kick to the corners etc. No one that I know is categorically saying we would've won at all.

Our attack has been our Achilles heel all season, most Saints fans will admit that.

However just to add- Wigan's points for has been largely inflated by playing a HKR reserve team at home and a Leeds side that had given up the season.

The HKR one I can go with (Saints wouldn't have come close to putting that many on them mind) but that Leeds team had beaten Hull FC 28-12 the week before and were playing to keep their season alive. Their heads went when the game started to get away from them but that wasn't a team already on their holidays in the first part of the game.

Our points difference was "inflated" by nilling Catalans on their own pitch. Now let me just check how Saints went against Catalans this season....

At the end of the season too. Not preseason.

It's irrelevant, the best team finished top of the league and won the GF. As the great Alex Murphy used to say, 'those that win can laugh and those that don't can please themselves'. I've got a smile as big as the Grand Canyon.

If you all want a laugh, head over to RedVee and read Magic Superbeetle's appraisal of the Saints spine compared to Wigan's on the transfers thread Apparently all are better than their Wigan counterparts apart from Dodd (who will of course be better once he's regained full form as apparently he will do in the off season)



Even Mbye is better than O'Neil! The best one, though, is that Lomax, despite being a virtual no show this season, is better than the league's best player, Bevan French! I must have missed all his good performances this year. To be fair, so did the Man Of Steel panel so at least I'm not in my own.

I just wonder if we'd get any players in that combined team now

The Beetle had his/her heart set on Luke Thompson until it became apparent he was going to Wigan. Funnily enough once that happened Thompson was a huge risk as his injuries had caught up with him. Most comical poster on Redvee and that takes some doing

Sorry mate. Maybe Farrell on the bench...



The man is seriously deluded. Nothing Wigan do can compete with anything Saints do. All our signings for the upcoming season are either no good or risky and he still thinks every Saints player is better than their Wigan counterpart (and the odd ones that aren't are actually better players who are just in bad form).

Given that Saints have just been crowned champions, I suppose it's hard to argue really

Just been pointed out Faz prob make their subs bench.
Such a great team that Saints are we are very very lucky they didnt get to the final as we all know what would have- Same winners !.

My favourite was old Saddo saying it’s depressing we won because we did it with a powderpuff pack and even that will be sorted next year. Watching Smithies, O’Neill, Ellis, Byrne, KPP and co flying In to people this past few months certainly hasn’t looked powderpuff and if it is, so be it, we’ll console ourselves with that big shiny thing sat in the trophy cabinet.

We just have to accept that, as a club, Wigan are inferior to St Helens in every way imaginable

Once we get to that point, we will all be much happier

And that little shiny thing at its side.

I saw that. Completely missing the point that we had Cooper, Byrne and effectively Havard missing or that our "powderpuff pack" has been destroying teams for the last 2 months or so, including the Catalans pack on their own pitch! Also completely ignored the fact that we played an interchange down so the props had to play long minutes.

To be fair, Saints without Walmsley, Paasi and Lees would be stronger though, what with LMS taking up the slack and having back rowers Knowles and Mata'utia as ready made super props!

Now that's a powderpuff pack!

Simply the best played at the end of Sky’s GF recording on Saturday. I love it, my mate’s a Saints fan and he hates it. Hopefully, we will hear it played when teams come to town.

Saddo, if Smithies can get a gig in the NRL so can I, Dodd will have no problem. Priceless

Credit to sky for that, Ive watched it about 18 times.

Well said that man!

Saints fans still think of Smithies pre Peet.
He is light years ahead of that now with good handling skills and he’s cut down on the penalties. The best LF in SL by a country mile and I will be very surprised if he doesn’t make it in the NRL. Personally I would have liked Smithies to stay but irrespective of contract terms it’s almost impossible for good young players to resist the lure of the NRL. I think that Smithies isn’t married and has no children so he can concentrate on just himself to make the move a success.
Knowles their chosen one is a very fit athlete but one dimensional and his future will be the grunt prop for Saints unless they find a decent new prop before the start of the 2024 season.

I like Dodd although as everyone agrees he has lost a lot of ability since his major injury. Form an international point of view I hope that he recovers in 2024 because currently we are not blessed with good home grown half backs.

The other factor in Dodd’s downturn in form is that Lomax has been a shadow of his former self.

Interestingly, the crowd for the GF was only 2,500 less than Saints v Leeds got the year before and a massive 13,000 more than the Saints v Catalans generated in 2021. Well done the guys and gals from Wigan, still the biggest draw in RL.

Lomax and Dodds downturns may also because the Saints pack have lost the big advantage they had.
Roby was coming to an end Walmsley didn't look as dominant last season and this one seemed even more past his peak at his best he was worth two forwards or more, LMS also couldn't feed off his dominance, Pasi injured back end who was looking their best forward and even the yards Perci and Tommy make don't look so damaging now. Obviously they put a lot into the start of season but looked like a old boxer on the ropes who's had a few to many fights, although still hanging in with the chance of landing a good punch. Maybe a good long off season will see them refreshed but it does feel like it's the end of an era maybe.

Bit weird to be trying to use the 2021 final as a feather in your cap when travel restrictions meant Catalan couldn’t bring as much as they could have and many people were still very wary about leaving their homes and going to mass gatherings etc. you also had 58k more than the 2020 final, impressive!

58k is a decent enough crowd tbf. Could have been worse. I would however expect a fairly decent following when it’s your first final in 5 years and your fans are by and large confident of a win. I do think last year’s crowd was pretty poor too, tho I don’t think it held much intrigue as a contest and fair weather saints fans were probably a bit blase about it by then and I doubt many neutrals would have wanted go for what was always very likely to be yet another saints victory.

Would have been interested to see what the crowd would have been for a Wigan v Saints final this year though. Really think the rivalry, positivity around Wigan, nervousness about the result from both sides, neutral intrigue etc could have led to the biggest crowd for a long time. Ah well. Maybe next year!

Fwiw even as a Saints fan I’m fairly happy you won. Not personally perse, but I’m fairly happy that the negative tactics of us and Catalan came unstuck this year and the title went to a team playing good rugby all season. Could really do with the game moving on from some of the turgid displays put on in big games the last few years