Saint Toppy

I said allegedly regarding the £75K because the person who told me that from the club may or may not actually know the true value. With regards to the 'double the offer' comment - that came from someone at the club who definately does know (though they wouldn't tell me the value the double part is true)

I actually think Mikaele will turn out OK for Wire, not spectacular by any means but a decent forward who will help them make yards. Kasiano is an interesting one - can be great coming off the bench if he can be bothered to turn up, but can equally be lazy as hell and just plod around completely disinterested. Be interesting to see if his attitude changes under Powell (though he's always been like that all through his career). Dudson is a baffling signing - complete waste of space IMO

They've signed Taukaiho from the Roosters

Saints knew he had a disciplinary issue but still offered him a new contract to match what they thought he was worth to the team (allegedly around £75K / Yr). Leeds offer to him was double Saints offer was, Saints just said no thanks not interested at that price. Best decision all round him going to Leeds

Good wingers are more than just 'battering rams'. If you want to compare him to Makinson, he puts in the work to try and make yards & help out the forwards, almost every winger does these days, difference is he regularly makes breaks from it, as do the likes of Johnson, Davies, Marshall etc. - Young doesn't. As for the reply about speed - good wingers can create their own space to then use their pace to beat their opposite - never seen young do this. If he needs someone else to be able to create the space for him then that isn't the sign of a good winger. No point having pace of you can't use it. Many of those try's QareQuare scored he made for himself, using his pace to beat the opposition players - to me that's the sign of a good winger. You really need to get over this whole "he plays in the NRL so he must be fantastic" obsession. Young isn't fantastic and hasn't shown much to suggest he ever will be. There's young wingers in SL who have already shown much more promise and natural wingers ability than Young has - QareQuare at Cas, Murphy at Wakey & Wrench at Wire to name but 3. If I had the option to pick a young promising winger to join an international squad i'd pick any of those 3 before Young

I seriously don't get this obsession with Young -I've seen nothing to indicate he's going to be anything special. If you class driving the ball in and making metres a good performance from a winger then you & I have very different expectations of what a winger is on the field to do. If his size & strength are his main attribute then he should be judged on how many times he actually comes out the other side of one of those drives and makes the break. If you look at the other big powerful wingers in the NRL they consistently make tackle busts & breaks - Young doesn't. If its speed as his asset then I'd judge how good a winger is on how well he can use that speed to burn his opposite on the outside and round the FB - Can't say i've seen Young do this either. If people want to talk about an inexperienced teenage winger who's actually making an impression then it should be someone like QareQare at Cas. His performances are what i'd want to see from a young winger.

Great Idea - They could then call themselves the League 2 Yorkshire division and could sit back on a Friday night and just watch the best teams play live on Sky in the West of the Pennines

But some of them aren't full time professionals, that was my point. I'll use Danny Moss at Saints as an example. He's still in full time education, and didn't want to take up a full time contract until he's finished his education. Whats wrong with that ? Many of these youngsters never make it so having an education to fall back on is a good thing IMO.

Many of the young lads on that wage wont be on full time contracts

Aren't the current rules something like you only need the support of 1/4 of the clubs (3 teams) to bring something to a vote ? Its almost certainly the same clubs every year bringing this to the table, the ones struggling financially

Woolf's interview with Saints TV is on the club's website and he says both have been back in training and will return to play in the next game. He also admits the club made a mistake with Hopoate and brought him back too early causing the hamstring injury to flare up again. This time he said they've learned from that mistake, hence why he's not been selected until he's 100% over the injury.

All these idiots do is cost the clubs more money because they risk losing the safety certificate and have to then increase stewarding & policing.

There's an outright ban on bringing flares into any football / rugby stadia in the country. Last time fans brought some into Saints ground the club introduced extra stewards and bag checks to try and stop it and at some games even brought in a specialist sniffer dog to try and catch fans concealing them on themselves to smuggle them in. I suspect it may be both Saints & Wire may get fines for last nights incident. Saints because its their fans who brought it and Wire for their stewards not preventing a banned item from being brought into the ground and for not intervening & apprehending the culprit on the night. Either way its sad for the game

I think that performance says a lot about where Saints are compared to Wire at the moment. Saints were disjointed in attack and made a shed load of errors, overall a fairly poor performance, while Wire put in probably their best performance of the year, yet Saints still found a way to win. Not getting to the CC Final is probably going to do Saints a favour in the long run this year I think they desperately need this week off to re-set. When the league resumes in a few weeks the Saints team will have a few changes. Woolf has already confirmed that Hopoate & Grace will be available so Grace back on the Wing & Percival back in the centres will make a big difference to the attacking threat down the left. Not sure whether Hopoate will slot in at 6 to replace Davies or whether he'll go to 1 and Welsby move to 6 (my gut feel is he'll go with the latter). The 2 young halves (Moss & Archer) will also be available for selection by the end of next month as they'll have finished their academic studies and be able to train full time with the 1st team. Moss played pretty well at Cas you I think he'll get a chance at some point to give Lomax a rest with his arm injury. So while this was a poor Saints performance it was still 2 league points won

Plenty of players go through periods of injury and clubs often retain them. I think what sets this one out is that Johnstone would likely be going to Cats as a 'big money' signing. So for them its a huge gamble to bring in a player from another club who's had quite a few years of serious injury and multiple different injuries at that (head, elbow, leg)

Harvey Howard started life as a Winger but by the end of his career was a prop. Don't ever recall him playing FB though ??

Having 1 lazy overpaid Fifita in SL is bad enough, but having 2 is just a joke, especially as the 2nd one is so injury prone as well. He's been hobbling round on 1 leg in the NRL for about 3 years now - surely nobody would be stupid enough to take these 2 on, would they ???

Don't quite share the confidence of some, regardles of current form Wire usually manage to raise their game against Saints. Still think Saints will win but probably by no more than 2 scores Wire 8 - 20 Saints

Of the current players Welsby has played at FB, Wing, Centre, SO, SH, Hooker and LF, winning 3 cup finals playing in 3 of those different positions (SH, LF & Centre).

They may both be the same size and weight but there's a world of difference between the 2. Farrell is just too passive in defence compared to Bateman. When was the last time you saw an opposition player make a mistake because they were more concerned in looking where Farrell was coming from to tackle them, or when you last saw an opposition forward crumpled in a heap on the floor from a crunching tackle from him ?? Farrell is a good SL standard player no doubt but not international class. Its not just his size its his lack of aggression that's also an issue, something Bateman has in spades. Bateman didn't have a particularly good year last year (but neither did Farrell) but he's improved this year (though not quite to his NRL form as yet), so as long as he's fit Bateman is always going to be that choice over Farrell. Others have said Wane would be mad to select both of them together. They may get away with it against the weaker reams like France but against Aus, NZ & Tonga we would get hammered on the edges.

Farrell uses what he's got to good effect and his main asset is his line running. He runs great lines between defenders and offers a good option for his ball players. Where he often struggles though is helping his team out when they need to make yards up the middle, he's not very effective at that, which puts more pressure on a teams front rowers to make up those yards. He also struggles when faced with a team who have a big centre & 2nd row partnership down that side. I'm not saying he's a bad defender but his lack of size often leaves him struggling to shut down plays in a 1 on 1 situation which put more pressure on the guys defending outside of him. I know Bateman isn't much bigger but his aggression in the tackle makes him a more effective defender and is one reason why he was a good player in the NRL and why I don't think Farrell would have ever made it over there.

Brooks was always never more than average. He looked decent when he had Moses running the game along side him but once he jumped ship for Parra Brooks was completely shown up

Ah but you can't count that, Its Saints who always bring a good away following, so it obviously skews the attendance figures

So exactly how many did Leeds get for their home tie against Wire ??? (or does it only skew the data because Leeds didn't get 16K for the same home fixture ) Saints have an 18K sell out on GF, Will Leeds manage an 18K crowd this year ???

Sold out weeks ago Good Friday now SOLD OUT! - St.Helens R.F.C. (saintsrlfc.com)