Regarding the Huddersfield game it was easy to see it coming.

Huddersfield lacked nothing in enthusiasm and aggression against Rovers they just came up against a better team on the day but not by much.

Hull were spent after the Wigan game and had nothing left to offer.

The reason why Rovers are 5th and Hull are 10th is superior fitness.

Of course our culture is what sets us apart look at w@nkys squad for example on paper it's as good as Saints Wigans or Catalans but their culture is poor

That’s not how I see it.

For balance, I don’t think it is a coincidence that Rovers last period of trophy-winning success followed on from them breaking transfer records. I’m sure the culture was good and that helped, along with having a core of players who’d come through the ranks. Fairytaling (new verb for the day) it doesn’t add anything extra for me… possibly because I’m emotionally stunted, admittedly.

I saw Shaun Edwards interviewed by James Haskell and Mike Tindall a little while ago. They asked him about his time at Wigan and set him up with a standard ‘special culture’ question, but fair play to him - he acknowledged they had all the best players and more money, drawing parallels with Manchester City’s current dominance of the EPL. Shaun Edwards gets it. I strongly suspect the hierarchy at Saints get it too… and what is an easier narrative for the media and fans to digest.

Rumbled.

I wonder what Dan’s thoughts are on hypersensitive agency detection.

Money of course makes the world go round but Saints do a good job of refreshing the squad at the right time. From their SL win 5 years ago for example there is only Makinson, Percival, Lomax, Warmsley, Knowles and LMS & Roby left, about half the team including most of the forwards have been refreshed. Players over 30 seem to get 1 yeat deals and have to prove their worth. Hull would have handed the squad long deals and just expect them to be at the same level 5 years later.

And for all the player & coaches that have come and gone at Saints ,The results and attitude are the complete polar opposite to ours . Nothing in that club ever changes .

Saints success is built on their academy, there have ex academy players in all 5 key positions with Welsby, Lomax, Dodd, Roby and Knolwes. Add in Lees, Perival and Makinson, means they can take some risks with their overseas places.

Yes, agree with this.

As you say, money makes the world go round, without it any business will struggle, rather obviously! Having a superior budget to your competitors is a big advantage to maintaining your position at the head of your given sector.

However, it isn't the be and end all, especially in the realm of sport. Money alone will not buy you guaranteed success, unless your budget is so superior to your competitors that they simply cannot operate to the same parameters as you. The money invested in Warrington's current squad has borne little fruit in recent times. Going back to pre-SL, Leeds seemed to suffer similar problems throughout the 1980s, when substantial investment in the playing roster year on year throughout the decade only ever seemed to produce under-performing teams. It took a combination of Gary Hetherington and Tony Smith in the early 2000s to change the attitude of the entire club, thereby instilling a winning mentality which carried them through a period of sustained success.

Your point about Saints refreshing their squad is particularly relevant to our predicament as it is something we have singularly failed to do over many years. Since 1985 we have had three periods were we threatened to put ourselves back on top (1989-91, 2004-06, 2016-17) only to fall back into mid-table mediocrity very quickly. One of the chief factors in these very swift declines was our inability to refresh the squad each year (although financial considerations undoubtedly played their part in 91/92). Saints, along with Wigan, are the masters of slowly reinventing their squads without it having any detrimental effect to their chances of winning silverware year on year as they rebuild, therefore their dominance always seems to be seamless with no breaks until you realise they have a different team from the one they had five years ago, as you point out above.

It's not just in RL this is the case either. Liverpool and Man Utd both largely dominated football for twenty years apiece, partly as a result of their ability to recognise when to move players on and replace them with quality substitutes, a trait Man City currently exhibit, although having a budget of a around £1 billion sure helps. But even then, if money is the be all and end all, why haven't Man Utd, the so called self-styled 'biggest club in the world' being floundering for the past ten years and counting!

So, I reckon it's a combination of the two. Any club needs a healthy budget to succeed, but it has to be backed up with a coherent winning culture in order to lead to real sustained success. Either way, we seem to lacking on both of those fronts right now.

I think Hurrell and Bell are good examples of saints culture, if we'd have signed them, they'd likely have taken shortcuts / the lazy option in training and games and not stood out in our team whereas at saints there's no room to hide and average players become good players because they buy in to the system and raise their standards to not let their team mates down, we don't quite have that culture yet

The last 2pages has been the best I have read on here for a long time.the link mild rover produced for the fainaces of all clubs made intresting reading.we seemed to to come out of 2022 not to badly but how much are the Covid repayments back to the government.I don’t think we arere as skint as some “posters”make out and maybe Pearson is thinking il see how Smith goes as he has had his fingers burned with the resigng of fonoua and the signings of Reynolds’s and Evans all on massive money and gale wouldn’t have been cheap and Gerri g sod all inreturn.Pearson does take the blame as well for ok the deals it what was whispered in is ear by the coaches at the time.