Leeds went fully pro within the same time frame and won zip.

Don’t confuse the poor chap with facts.

It’s obvious we were full time and everyone else’s squad was filled with miners and mill workers who were subsided a days pay to play on the weekend.

Today where a number of teams can’t afford to utilise the full salary cap and where certain teams have had seasons playing significantly less games than others and refused to release players for internationals is a perfectly level playing field.

Agree, top teams not only spend to the full cap, but take advantage of having up to two marquee players per season whilst other teams may only be able to afford 75-80% of the cap = still not a level playing field. Just need to look at which teams have won the GF since 1998.

As long as it isn't Wigan it's an improvement on how things were when we ruined the game.

Awww bless you.



Hopefully the Wigan players also think this result was due to just missing Walmsley rather than the players clearly switching off for two weeks with Toulouse and Whitehaven to play after whipping everyone else. We left Roby on the bench for 60 minutes - it's clear we went into this game soft and paid the price - fair play to Toulouse. Saying it's because Al didn't play is to massively over-simplify, it was clear from minute one when we didn''t field a kick off then conceded from the first set that we weren't at the races

Attitude was miles off, the same team beats most of SL with their heads switched on, Walmsley or no Walmsley.

We hear about how poor SL is, then on other threads I'm reading you have two players better than Ben Barba! I suppose we'll see how overrated everyone except Walmsley is come Good Friday.

Just hoping on GF we hear (as my somewhat tongue in cheek original post suggested) "Alex go back a yard and play the ball". We probably will see then how far in front of us you are, no arguments you're better than us at the moment but watching Walmsley continually walking off the mark after he's been tackled is annoying as a neutral and infuriating when it's against your team.
If he gets away with it playing for England then that's a different kettle of fish

Disingenuous much?

What’s your thoughts on superleague as a whole? The quality of the other sides in general? Are the usual suspects who challenge for trophies (Wigan, Warrington, Leeds etc) worse than they’ve been at any point in the last decade?!

It really grates on Saints fans when a lack of an injury crisis is brought up or if people say they’re dominating an extremely poor competition and I’d love just one to come out and admit that there are elements of that. It’s not the be all and end all of the success, of course it’s not, but it’s not hurt, much in the same way that having a really strong and settled side going in to all the Covid disruption and the challenges the aftermath of that has brought hasn’t either.

Firstly, the first enforced Covid break in 2020 allowed every team in the league to have a longer pre-season. Any players with injuries, knocks or recovering from operations had longer to recover. Not only Saints benefited from that.

Secondly, we also won the CC in 2021 which meant that we played extra games than any other team apart from Castleford so I'd love someone to supply me with statistics of just how many less games we played overall than other teams.

I don't deny that we have been relatively injury free compared to others but again how much of that is luck? Years of being mostly injury free is luck? I'm not so sure. Look at the mess Wigan made of rushing Bevan French back and the way they managed Burgess. Would Saints S & C team have done the same? Not a chance. I remember under Mick Potter that we had a period of suffering a lot of quad injuries. That was attributed to particular training programs and an obsession of putting size on. Certain teams suffer with certain injuries, it wasn't so long ago that Wigan fans on here were questioning your own S & C team due to the number of hamstring injuries suffered.

We were so lucky with injuries last year we lost our scrum half for the season in the middle of a cup final and played the rest of the season with an academy 7. Maybe other teams just find more excuses when they're missing a few, as we were for chunks of the season, or have worse juniors. Whisper it (as people won't like to hear it) maybe they are even less professional in their preparation or not as fit?

Or maybe the same clubs are unlucky and the same clubs lucky over years and years and conditioning/depth/balanced squad building/junior development has nothing to do with it.

Also lost Bentley for the season from Magic Weekend. He was one of the stand out back rowers that season. Lees with an achilles for 10-12 weeks around that time too.

The fact you can point so easily to individual injuries and when they were out sums it up. Other teams have that many it’s impossible to list them all, when they were out, which games they over lapped in. It all just merges in to ‘we had 8+, 10+ out etc’ for large spells of the season.

We’re going round in circles on the injury front. It’s a mixture of good conditioning and good fortune and you clearly have had both.

Moving over to the quality of the competition, it’s dreadful. Imagine a side finishing 4th playing like we did last year. We’ve won 5 from 6 this season playing ‘so so’. Saints are head and shoulders the best side on the league, no doubts about it but the quality across the board is so so poor. Talk of a 4th consecutive title cementing their place as the best ever superleague side is laughable really. It’s not even close to being Saints best side IMO.

On paper it would be as no one has ever achieved that feat so whilst the opinion is subjective, it would probably go down in history as the best (until someone else does the same)

However I keep coming back to the salary cap. The Saints side of 2000 was incredible however in that team was Wellens, Long, Cunningham and Sculthorpe. Thats without including the likes of Newlove, Sullivan or the Aussie imports who would have been on good money. There is no way now that you can fit the quality of those players into the same team but what we have done really well is to recruit well and blood our own. Our 1, 6, 7, 9 and 13 spine are all Academy grown players. We bought well from the Championship in the likes of Batchelor and Bentley so I'd say us lauding the Saints team of 2019-2022 is perfectly allowed.

It's not as though we have blown teams out of the water spending fortunes etc so with the restraints of a salary cap, I'd say to win it 3 in a row (and being the team to beat for the 4th year) should be applauded. That's the frustrations Saints fans have. Whilst I am being accused of not recognising the points you all make about injuries or a poor comp, I can turn that on its head and say that none of you will give us the due credit. We are just known as "the best of a bad bunch" it seems.

It all comes down to cycles, for periods of time certain clubs seem to have a golden period. It is a combination of factors at the time - the right players, the right coaching and even luck all come together to make a team seemingly so much better than everyone else for a period of time. Bradford were almost unbeatable in the Noble era then Leeds with Sinfield etc were the top team - Saints have that now and their fans should enjoy it while they can because the history of the game shows clearly that it will come to an end at some point and another club will rise instead. Who knows which one..

Arguments about if SL is better now or in the past are fairly meaningless as the game changes - the style of play now is very different from say in the late 90s or early 2000s, driven in part by changing rules as much as anything. That has a knock-on effect in the types of players as well - how many off-loading props are there now or playing making 13s? It is not that players are worse as such just a different type of player is valued these days and defensive patterns have improved as well.

Let me exaggerate the situation in order to illustrate the point. If we played 1 game and won it for a hundred per cent record (but played lots of games in other different competitions) and you played 28 games including a 27 game unbeaten run but lost the last one, would that make us genuine champions in your eyes? Also would you call that an even competition?

It doesn't matter that you played more games in a different competition; we are discussing the Superleague and how you had an advantage in that competition.

I'm not even sure how you see any room for argument. It's a simple statement of fact.

But we didn't win the comp on that did we? We had to win a knockout game and then a Final so I'm really not sure what your point is here. If it is that we played less games so we were fresher then I've argued against that with the CC run, whether its a different comp or not its still extra games.

It would be an advantage if we finished top of the table due to a skewed win percentage, played less games and then were awarded the trophy but it wasn't like that.

I give Saints huge credit for building this side under this salary cap and for keeping it mainly together. It’s something we cannot seem to do and there’s no doubt that frustrates all Wigan fans. Ultimately though it’s a level playing field now and it was a level playing field in the late 90’s/early 2000’s. Even with a cap some spend more than others, just as they did back then and I don’t place any higher value in success now than I would’ve done then.

The matter is subjective as you say but unless there is a real surge in the overall quality of this league, this Saints side could make it 4, 5, 6 or whatever titles in the trot and I still won’t have it as the best superleague side ever or even the best Saints side. I mean look at the comparisons-Lyon or Percival? Newlove or Hopoate? Long or Dodds? Sculthorpe or Knowles? A prime Cunningham and a prime Roby working together or a 36 year old Roby and Lussick?

We couldn’t win a title in those early 2000’s with a side containing Radlinski, Jason Robinson, Connolly, Steve Renouf, Adrian Lam, Terry Newton, Craig Smith, Andy Farrell etc. That lot would fold this current Saints team in half as well. That isn’t disrespectful, it’s just how it would be.

The game over here has gone backwards for years, in the main our better players have headed off to Australia and we’re at a stage now where the quality is pretty low in general. So if you think people think Saints are ‘the best of a bad bunch’ I’d say you’re on the right lines unfortunately.

On the plus side for Saints they are showing exactly what can be done even in times like these. You can build a high quality side, even with all the disadvantages this comp has and I really hope Saints get the credit they’ll deserve eventually for raising standards over here. Teams need to be forced to raise their games and Saints will absolutely make any side who wants to be successful do that.

It's really simple; In order to have an even competition all teams would have to play the same number of games. Are you disagreeing with this statement?

Different competitions are irrelevant to the competition we're discussing. No one is challenging your Challenge Cup victory. All the Superleague teams were set the same challenge to win that competition and you came out on top. That can't be said of the League. Surely you must recognise this?

It's really simple; In order to have an even competition all teams would have to play the same number of games. Are you disagreeing with this statement? If it was the team finishing top of the table wins it then I would agree with you. The fact remains that us playing less games didn't win us the trophy due to that. It merely enabled us to qualify for the play offs which we then had to win a knockout game and a Final to lift the trophy. Or do you not agree with that?

The point I made about the CC win was that you then can't say "you played less games so were more fresh than other teams"

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. Are you saying that had Saints played another couple of games then the rest of the league would have been more competetive with Saints and Catalans? If not, what is your point and how is it relevant to the SL win?

You make some valid points no question. On a personal level I agree that the Saints side of 2000-2002 was arguably our best ever in terms of quality, skill level etc. Although played in a completely different era, if the two sides played each other hypothetically then I think the 2000 side wins.

That is why I mentioned the statistics part. Whether you like it or not or even agree, if we do win 4 in a row then this team will undoubtedly be referred to as the best in SL History.

On a different note its certainly nice to debate when done constructively.

This thread is now approaching 100 posts, it was about 10 on Saturday night

Teams playing a different number of games had little bearing on the Saints trophy wins for me. I thought the whole non selection of Saints players for the Exiles team and England pull outs was a bit naughty though tbh, as was the post cup final ‘Covid outbreak’ and one of the reasons for that is Saints are that far in front of everyone else, I didn’t think stuff like that was needed and lacked a bit of class. Saints could’ve won the lot last year without Woolf playing those sort of games.

Well that's exactly the point; we'll never know as it didn't happen. Had you played the extra couple of games and lost several players to injury, for example, would that have affected your playoff chances? Again, we'll never know as it didn't happen but I'd suggest that there's a fair chance it would have, especially given results when you do play a weakened team.

It's really simple. The competition wasn't an even one . The 2 finalists gained an advantage by playing fewer games in that competition. They're just statements of fact. No one can say what would have happened had that not been the case. Perhaps the result would have been the same, perhaps not. What isn't in doubt, though, is that it wasn't an even competition. As I say, that's just a simple statement of fact.

Now that IS something we can agree on!