Chris22

Pele and Ese'Ese have got a size advantage on the likes of Lees, Delaney and Mata'utai and they really do not run their weight. The young Hull players gave their best effort but I didn't think their more experienced players led in the way that you would expect them to. Really tough times for Hull at the minute.

Bookies giving us a 30+ start. Very generous given that we've only won by that margin twice since September 2022. Think we'll win but won't be a blowout.

Since the start of March, we have scored 12, 20, 18, 20, 12, 8 and 8 points in our matches. We have won 4 of those 6 matches, ironically, one of those defeats coming in one of the two matches where we did crack 20 points! Our defence is usually excellent so despite being low scorers, we win more than we lose. But based on the season so far, if a side can score three tries against Saints, they will probably win. On a day like today where our defence was not good, we were comfortably defeated. I don't say this to take away from Warrington's win (I thought they were very good, especially Williams) but I doubt their players came out of the match thinking that was a particularly tough game. You can't win them all, but when you do lose, you at least want to feel that your opponent was pushed to its absolute limits to win. That didn't happen today, which is a concern.

Over 11,000 at St Helens today, at the start of the match anyway! Helped with a 2,500 + away following, but Saints' biggest Challenge Cup attendance since 2005.

There are no 'rugby league' towns in England, in my view. In every one listed in this thread, I would wager that more people follow football than rugby league.

I could spend all day thinking about this. But my instinctive answer was the GB v Australia test match at the JJB in 2003. It's remembered for the Adrian Morley red card but was a brilliant game aside from that.

On the subject of TV viewing figures, I think you get more 'IMG points' for getting over 150K average viewers for your TV fixtures. With all matches on TV and several at the same time, I would guess viewers are spread more widely this year.

I'm interested to see what side we name. Sironen and Percival are out. Walmsley, Lees and Batchelor all doubts. I would rather we didn't risk any players even with a slight knock given the far more important match we have next week. Goalkicking will be an issue for us. Percival isn't a natural as it is. So it's Makinson who is hit and miss or Dodd who hasn't kicked for a long time. That will make things harder for us as we will probably go up in 4 rather than 6. I'll back us to win, very narrowly!

I've learned my lesson about underestimating Salford! Saying that, I still think Wigan will win in a low-scoring, very-tight game! Winner will end the night top of the league tonight, which is credit to Salford's excellent start!

How can we say with such certainty how many teams will be in the Championship and League 1, when we don't know how many teams will be in Super League?

Thought this was a good piece in St Helens Star about the usual calls for Cup restructuring. Link

Thought we were in control until Percival's red card. I don't see that as an excuse though, I would expect us to be good enough to win even with 12 men when we had a 14 point lead. We made some mistakes and Salford were good enough to execute and finish those chances. Sneyd was excellent and I thought Salford's expansive tactics worked very well against us and I expect Leeds will use a similar approach next week. From our perspective, Dodd has had a really strong start to the season which has been great to see.

A home match against Salford is one we should be winning. I've been impressed by Salford so far. It won't be anything like the pre season friendly, but I think we'll win by about 16 points.

Two teams with identical records makes it hard to call. I don't know what to make of Warrington yet, they have won the games you would expect. They did ok against Catalans but will have seen it as a missed opportunity playing against 12 men for 40 minutes. I liked what I saw of Hull KR in weeks 1 and 2 but they were quite error-ridden last week. I'd back Hull KR but with limited confidence!

Where it is easy to criticise, we should praise where players they do the opposite. Take Ricky Leutele for example. Hurrell and Leutele clashed heads on Friday (Hurrell being the defender). I don't think there was any malice at all on Hurrell's part but he didn't bend his back either. It happened very quickly and was hard to spot until a replay. If Leutele stayed down, it would have been reviewed and Hurrell may have been sin binned or sent off. He got up and the game continued. Although the job of players is to win. When a rule gets puts in place, they will try and get around it. Always have, always will.

I'd be a little worried if Mbye was used as a half back in the long term, whilst not ideal, I'd prefer to move Welsby and shift Bennison to full back. From what I've heard, the club is supposed to be quite excited about Robertson. Hopefully we don't have that worry this year anyway!

I think Hurrell is fine as a back up but agree that he wouldn't be first choice anymore. For centres, we have Percival, Blake, Hurrell, Davies and Vaughan (who seems highly rated) and for wingers we have Makinson, Bennison and Ritson (and Blake can play there). My main worry is we get an injury to Lomax or Dodd as we don't have a back up that wouldn't involve moving Welsby.

Saw a stat of Twitter that said Wigan had 21 play the balls inside Penrith's half for the entire match. One point which hasn't been picked up on too much is how clinical Wigan were, when they got inside Penrith's half, they tended to score. Part of the credit must go to go attacking play but Penrith will be disappointed with their defence. By contrast, Penrith had the majority of the territory but couldn't convert. Again, credit should go to excellent Wigan defence and Penrith will be annoyed at their lack of cutting edge and overly-cautious last tackle plays. If a game is played where territory is dominated so much by one team, Penrith in this case, they would win on the vast majority of occasions. The fact they didn't is what made the match so absorbing. I didn't have any issue with the Penrith no try at the end and thought it was an example of where the on-field call works well. There was no angle where you could track the ball, so going with the on-field referees judgement seemed reasonable. It was the combination of that and the Wardle try that made it contentious. I struggle to see how that was awarded. I'd almost like to see a reversal of the on field call. I wouldn't burden the referee with it at first but in examples like the Penrith no try at the end, the referee is asked for his view where the video referee has no angles available to him to make anything beyond a guess.

Lots to pleased with last night. Dodd is looking a lot sharper this year. I noticed Wellens' comments about allowing him more freedom with his kicking game (suggesting Dodd's predictable kicks last year were playing to the tactics given to him). Early days, but Clark looks a step up on the 2023 version of Roby and Whitley has made a great start too. Four points conceded across two games is outstanding and our attack looked more fluent too. Most pleasing of all is that our discipline was very good, something that was terrible last year and arguably cost us in two semi finals. A very encouraging start!

I'm surprised by the criticism of the BBC running this story. A player died as a result of taking a toxic level of tramadol. The player's family described him as impressionable and keen to fit in, and on record quotes from players saying how ingrained taking dangerous levels of these drugs at least was in the sport. Yet we criticise the BBC for reporting it? We seem to want to sweep the avoidable death of a teenage player under the carpet. Only the BBC and Total RL have reported on this story. No other rugby league media has as far as I can see it. Why? Because it's uncomfortable perhaps As a sport, we have banned the use of tramadol this year. I don't know enough about it to say whether this a proportionate and appropriate step but it's clear that the authorities are concerned.

Pleased with our debutants especially tonight, good to see both Whitley and Clark get over for their first tries. It did have a bit of a pre season friendly feel to it, with us never really having to get out of second gear. London tried hard but it was always going to be a tough night. Feel a bit sorry for them because their opening few fixtures are not kind.

Think we gave away around 2,000 tickets or so. We've tended to this against Catalans in recent years, usually for Home Bargains employees. I don't have a problem with it as a one-off over the course of a season, better than an empty stand as it otherwise would have been against London. Probably about 12,000 paying customers, which is still good.

I think it's that they've signed Tom Burgess!

Huddersfield teasing big news is on it's way at 3.30, being announced on Sky Sports News. Eorl Crabtree has said it's one of the biggest news stories in the club's Super League history. Let's see! Edit: Huddersfield have signed Tom Burgess from Souths!

I believe the gradings will only be announced after the season ends. So we will know the make up of Super League and the Championship later than we do now. With the grades being reviewed annually, this process will repeat year-on-year, making it very difficult (in my view) for many grade b clubs to plan, with them not knowing whether they will be in Super League even later than now. This seems like a recipe to widen the gap between the top of Super League and the rest, in my view.