To be fair, hes not the ine calling multiple grand final and challenge cup winners rubbish is he?

To be fair it’s not surprising to see St Helens fans commenting on a thread about St Helens.

They should be odds on for obvious reasons. I have a feeling they’ll get 2/3 but miss out on the big one.

Don’t worry - the players listed are definitely the equivalent standard as the saints players rested.

Didn’t realise it was such a controversial position to take, my apologies.

Course he is mate. Now go and have a lie down while Manfredi, Hardaker, Flower, Greenwood, Davis etc Cound their multiple Grand Final and Challenge Cup medals. Remind me again how many Walmsley has? He must have amassed a fair number, being better than all those multiple medal winners put together and having played in basically this same 'unbeatable' Saints side last year... not to mention MOS Ben Barba! Bet the guy can barely walk as he's weighed down by all that silverware.

Back on planet earth for a moment; Walmsley is class when fit and firing. But then so is Manfredi. So is Hardaker. So is Greenwood. To suggest Walmsley is better than all 3 put together (let alone the others) is complete and utter nonsense.

Your equivalents (regardless of your perceived relative merits of them as individual players) would be your first choice fullback, both wingers, main 2nd row and 1 of your starting props. Seeing the point being made was you would struggle without those, plus several other absentees, are you telling me you wouldn't? London would give you an argument.

Selective much?

Couldn't agree more, mate. I'd be as surprised as anyone if Saints don't lift the big one this year. My point was merely about counting chickens really. In fact we heard all last year how Saints were going to sweep all before them. All it took that year was the loss of form of one player (Barba) for the whole house of cards to come crashing down. As you say lose 3 or 4 to injury at the end of the season and the picture is suddenly completely different.

That said I can understand your optimism. I'm sure it was the same prior to the play off game at LP where we comprehensively ripped you a new one on the way to becoming champions*.

*apologies. Couldn't resist.

Its simple why we look unbeatable. We have a half decent team. The rest of SL is absolutely dire. Whilst we are on the Wigan forum, lets take them for example. How on earth a club operating at full cap can put together such an abysmal squad is beyond me. Even the 75-0 team was better on paper than this.

This Saints team would be no where near challenging in SL 10 years ago.

We are just lucky this year that the rest of SL are so bad.

-Well coached
-clearly know all structures in attack and defence
-2 running halves and a creative 9 who can take on the line as well as pass and create
-best front row in SL which can make the hard yards (Walms/Roby/Richardson)
-A FB who is good at reading the game in attack and defence, often links in the like as a second pivot or knows when to follow the attack done the middle.
-fast outside backs who can finish.

BUT, it's June, they look good, but have won naff all as of yet.

In comparison to us...

-Poorly coached
-players look to not know the attacking structures (often look clueless in attack) weak in defence
-poor uncreative halves, Williams has his moments but that's about it
-front row who collectively often produce embarrassing meter stats per game
-A FB (Hardaker) who is fantastic defensively but isn't a FB who links out wide as a second pivot (something which we've often been dependent on with Sam Tomkins)

All of the above + a steely determination to defend (particularly on the goal line) which seems to have got much worse for us this season

You got the feeling that they had a total disregard for their own safety they way they defended at times over the past few years, and teams were a bit wary of it. Not seeing much of that now (certainly over an extended period)

I was actually shocked that to read that we have the 3rd best defense in the league!

I don't think many people would disagree that we've cr@p defensively either.

If we could get the attack something like (4th worst the league) then we'd be leading the charge for 4th/5th imo.