FearTheVee

Yeah I agree with that

Who do we reckon commissioned the study?

It’s an Ashes series - I don’t care where the players are in their career, I care about winning the series. Pick the best players, end of. Next year is next year. I’d say there are probably 5 or 6 props in the squad who are demonstrably inferior to Walmsley IMO (albeit acknowledging you need different types of props on there).

He’s still comfortably the best prop at Saints and two others from Saints have been selected ahead of him. He’s still comfortably the top metre eating prop in SL IMO. Take 300m off him for Salford if you like - he’d still be ahead of any other prop for metres. He’s been excellent.

Not picking Walmsley is crackers

Nobody seems to mention we have Hull KR 3 times too . . . . ? But yes I hate the loop fixtures and it is inevitable that they will impact the ladder in a meaningful way most years.

Yep, then Leeds again in a couple of weeks. Across a block of just FIVE games, we play both Salford and Leeds twice. Absolutely nonsensical.

Yes for sure there will be restrictions on ability to contact them, but I'm more interested in how realistic it actualy is to be ringing people trying to sell thirty/forty quick tickets vs the cost of the people sat in the char making the calls. As someone else has said previously, I understand it for high margin hospitality etc but generally I can't see it making much sense commercially.

Indeed it is but I suspect any marginal profit on ticket sales would be more than swallowed by the cost of the approach. It's no coincidence that we get emails rather than calls about these events.

The deflective false-equivalence with some pics of McManus is pretty daft. Beaumont deliberately sought to ruin a post-match interview with a head coach on live TV, with his chosen method being "drunken moron". The McManus pics posted are of a chairman celebrating winning a trophy with his team/supporters, not deliberately ruining post-match coach interviews in a weekly round game. But then everyone knows that, including the person who posted them. DB's actions were embarrassing, unprofessional and rude. It's as simple as that.

Some key injuries at the wrong time for Saints but Salford this week is as close to a gimme as you can get. Then four big games out of five coming up in terms of the playoffs: Hull FC (H), Leeds (A), Leigh (H) and Wakey (A). Think we need to beat Hull and Wakey as a minimum out of those games to be confident of making the 6, and there is absolutely no guarantee we will beat either. This is the first year I've genuinely thought we might miss the play-offs but I take some comfort from the fact that despite how bad we've been against the better teams for some time now, I do think the team is still playing for Wellens and isn't a lost cause just yet.

Whist (rightly) complimenting the production, can we also point out just how terrible it is to watch players kicking for touch in a massive game to the backdrop of speakers blaring out Journey's don't stop believing or some other risible noise pollution?

Whilst injuries aren't helpful (think latest count is Welsby, Murphy, Percival, Whitby, Bell, Bachelor, possibly Sironen and Hurrell working his way back from long-term injury at Bradford) our form is poor against any team with a pulse anyway. We have a team out that should be able to complete, but I'm not sure it will. Think Leeds by 14+ I'd go: Sailor Feldt, Robertson, Cross, Dagnall Lomax, Mbye Walmsley, Clark, Lees Sironen, Whitley Knowles Subs: Wingfield, Delaney, Stephens, Burns If no Sironen, Wingfield into the XIII and Paasi onto the bench.

Well the last ashes series sold 75k tickets and we sold about that many over two tests in a few weeks before we even consider selling say 35k tickets at wembley with over four months to go. So something is definitely better, or something at least definitely feels better about the approach. I accept that part of the pull is scarceity of the ashes concept given 20+ years since the last one, whereas in 2003 there was only two years since the last 3 match series. There is more ambition behind this and the ticketing approach, announcements etc have been better than most series I can remember.

Yeah - all fair points, was sure I'd read Moran was involved but perhaps not