Saint Toppy

Yeah because cricket is such a fine example of a perfect sport - just ask all the 'non white' players at Headingly how they feel about the 'friendly banter' between players !!!

Not everyone in the NRL should be tarred with the same brush as the Penrith Pussies. Clubs like the Roosters, Storm, Bunnies & Bronco's are big supporters of this competition and look forward to the chance to play against the SL champions and earn the title of the best club side in the world. Its the winging clubs like the Penrith pussies and whining a****s like Gould who constantly slate the competition that cause all the issues and generate the ill feeling.

According to the RFL's disciplinary site a Grade F is now a minimum of 8 games

INBRED BOGAN TROLL ALERT INBRED BOGAN TROLL ALERT

I presume you mean Gray Viane ? Saints brought him over from the NRL and he was something of a flop, playing only a handful of games before they offloaded him to Widnes, who then offloaded him to Cas, who then offloaded him to Salford, who then couldn't offload him to anyone else as nobody would take him. I think he just returned to Aus and played lower leagues after that.

Not sure but at least it isn't the club. Saints made it clear that they would only travel to Aus if all their bills were paid for the trip, just like all the previous Aussie clubs have done when they've come over to the UK.

Holbrook introduced a 'hybrid' system at Saints which has subsequently been carried on by Woolf and now Wellens. They have a team captain (Roby) but also have a leadership team (which I think currently is Lomax, LMS, Makinson & Walmsley) and the whole group meets with the coaching team every week.

Yeah heard something similar. It was supposed to just be an opposed training session but the NS players tried to change it into a full match with plenty of swinging arms, head shots and other dirty tactics you'd usually only find in a full match. A few Players have already taken to writing online how they generally feel disrespected out there and SL seen as a 2nd rate competition so things like this NS incident will just serve to fire up the players even more you'd think.

I think a lot of the 'scratchy' performances was due to having to chop & change the team almost every week, particularly in the backs. Remember they had Grace & Dodd missing for almost the entire season, Percival & Hopoate for large parts of it (and when they did play they weren't fit) and Lomax playing injured for most of the year. When you have 5 of your 7 first choice backs having a badly disrupted season there's always going to be problems with consistency. Then add in Walmsley missing for the end of year, that disrupts the forwards too. At the end of the day they were still the best team in SL, finishing top and winning the GF

Amongst most of the other Saints fans i've talked to there isn't really an expectation either way. There's a confidence that this Saints team can match it with Penrith, particularly in the forwards and most people feel that it could come down to 1 or 2 key incidents that decide the result. Whether those be individual mistakes by a player, a controversial call by the ref or a piece of individual brilliance by a player on either side we'll have to wait and see. It would be great to see Saints win and beat the best the NRL has to offer in their own back yard, but if they don't I wont be too disappointed as long as the team and individual players gives it their absolute all and shows pride in the jersey. If we don't get the win it would still be nice to be able to show all the SL haters in the NRL and the Aussie press that this competition has great players who are every bit as good as some of theirs.

Saints last WCC game against the Roosters was far closer than I think most Aussies expected. Yes it was at Saints and yes the Roosters won but Saints dominated for large parts of that game and bombed a couple of chances that would have taken the game away from the Roosters at that stage of the match. Ultimately it was just a piece of individual brilliance from Luke Keary that put the Roosters clear and won them the game. That Roosters team was every bit as good then as the Penrith team are now, arguably better given the numbers of absolute superstar players they had in that line up

Not sure thats the actual team Saints will be starting with, they appear to have just listed all the Saints players in numerical order from their squad numbers. I think Hurrell will start ahead of Hopoate, Sironen will start ahead of Matat'utia and its 50/50 who gets the starting spot on the left wing between Bennison & Ritson.

Where did you see the team info ? For the pre-season challenge tournament teams are permitted to use their full squad of 26 players with unlimited subs. The only exception is the WCC game where its a standard 17 man squad plus 18th man and 10 interchanges. Saints will likely start with their first choice against the Dragons but will undoubtedly be giving game time to to a fair few of the fringe players otherwise it was pointless taking them all out there.

Their 2 big losses are Kikau & Koroisau, other than that its pretty much the team they had from last year.

Its unlikely to happen given one of their 2 games is against the Penrith pussies for the WCC, but they have a chance of pocketing an extra $100K on top of their fees for taking part in the WCC. The most entertaining team over the 2 round competition pockets the extra prize money.

Injuries aside, Richardson appears to be one of those players who looks destined never to fulfill their early career potential. Looked something really special coming through the juniors and had a couple of really good games when he first broke into the 1st team at Saints. However he never really kicked on in his 2nd season and ultimately then lost his place to Fages and moved on to Cas. Not had the best of luck with injury since going there but lets see how well he recovers from this latest serious injury.

Because he's still under contract and why would Wakey release one of their star players just weeks before the start of the SL season. I seriously doubt Murphy has an "NRL Release" clause in his current contract with them that allows him to leave early. Transfers fees count on the NRL SC so the Roosters wont pay a fee to get him early when he's still a largely unproven player at the top level. They only tend to pay fees to try and land top class international players in SL.

I agree, Cas are going to struggle this year, can't see them finishing any higher than 9th or 10th

Yeah, Saints didn't play any of their England WC International players or Roby, Walmsley & Percival, so ultimately had 9 first choice players out, but still fielded a fairly strong starting 13. They were 16-0 up but for the last 20mins had a team consisting of mostly kids out there which is when Widnes ran in all their points. Great to see Dodd make his comeback from a long injury lay-off, though pick of the players was Jumah Sambou on the wing who himself was making a comeback from serious injury that cut short his 2022 season.

Any voting system based purely on 'opinion' is always going to cause controversy. Personally i'd have a 'Dual' system where MOS points are allocated on an 'opinion voting' as we have now and also on a 'performance measured' system, a bit like the VB hard earned index they have in the NRL. So your overall MOS score is based on 50% opinion voting and 50% measurable performance. That way players who aren't necessarily the commentators 'favourites' wont always win MOS, players who consistently make large numbers of tackles, tackle busts, Hit-ups, offloads etc. will pick up MOS points week after week.

Bruines is a bit of an unknown but Delaney i'd say is is probably the most promising prop to come through since Jammer. I can see why he made the England Knights team at the end of the season despite being only 18 and having just a couple of 1st team substitute appearances to his name. He'll get more game time this year and if he continues to develop will probably take LMS spot as a regular top 17 player when he retires at the end of this season.

I see Barrow have signed Saints teenage half-back Ellis Archer. He still lives in Barrow and was commuting to Saints nearly every day so probably a good move for the lad to drop down a division in order get more regular 1st team rugby and not have the long daily commute. Seen him a few times and the lad has shown a lot of promise, think he'll go well at Barrow. Been told that part of the deal to release him from his contract Saints have a "First option signing" for him if he ever decides to go full time Pro with a SL club in the future.

I don't think those predictions will be too far off, though I do think maybe Salford will finish higher than 8th. Agree about Wigan winning the hubcap ahead of Saints this year. The WCC is going to be a major disruption for them at the start of the season and I can't see them being any higher than 4th or 5th come Easter, leaving them too much ground to make up on the leaders come the end of the year. Regardless of the result in the WCC Saints will almost certainly send another 'weakened' team away at Cas the round after they get back from Aus. so come round 3 Saints will already be 4pts behind the leaders.

We have no idea yet what the weighting will be for each individual criteria, on-field results may receive a bigger weighting to the overall score or it may be the other way around - we'll just have to wait & see on that one. Similarly for finances, however based on what IMG have said so far (limited as that is) it would seem that most of the criteria will be fixed against grades regardless of what league you play in. So nobody is likely to get promoted to SL and immediately get an A grade unless that have a rich backer who is willing to put in the money that is at least equal to the money a SL club receives

Have you not been paying attention, performance related P&R is staying at least in the short term, the only difference being is the performance is based on more than just 'on field' results. A cubs grade of license will be based on both on-field and off-field performance.