Re: Catalans (GF) : Mon Oct 16, 2023 10:11 pm  

Simply the best played at the end of Sky’s GF recording on Saturday. I love it, my mate’s a Saints fan and he hates it. Hopefully, we will hear it played when teams come to town.

Re: Catalans (GF) : Mon Oct 16, 2023 10:15 pm  

Saddo, if Smithies can get a gig in the NRL so can I, Dodd will have no problem. Priceless

Re: Catalans (GF) : Tue Oct 17, 2023 8:49 am  

Zig wrote:

Simply the best played at the end of Sky’s GF recording on Saturday. I love it, my mate’s a Saints fan and he hates it. Hopefully, we will hear it played when teams come to town.

Credit to sky for that, Ive watched it about 18 times.

Re: Catalans (GF) : Tue Oct 17, 2023 11:21 am  

Phuzzy wrote:

The defence from both teams was outstanding. If that had been 2 NRL teams people would have been waxing lyrical about how much better the NRL teams are defensively. Because it's 2 Superleague teams it's boring

We talk down our comp too readily. It was a final. If the teams had thrown it around it would have been used as an example of how naïve the Superleague is and how that wouldn't work against well drilled NRL teams. Play it tight and the teams "have no ideas in attack".

This obsession with talking our own game down no matter what is simply bizarre!

Well said that man!

Re: Catalans (GF) : Tue Oct 17, 2023 11:49 am  

Zig wrote:

Saddo, if Smithies can get a gig in the NRL so can I, Dodd will have no problem. Priceless

Saints fans still think of Smithies pre Peet.
He is light years ahead of that now with good handling skills and he’s cut down on the penalties. The best LF in SL by a country mile and I will be very surprised if he doesn’t make it in the NRL. Personally I would have liked Smithies to stay but irrespective of contract terms it’s almost impossible for good young players to resist the lure of the NRL. I think that Smithies isn’t married and has no children so he can concentrate on just himself to make the move a success.
Knowles their chosen one is a very fit athlete but one dimensional and his future will be the grunt prop for Saints unless they find a decent new prop before the start of the 2024 season.

I like Dodd although as everyone agrees he has lost a lot of ability since his major injury. Form an international point of view I hope that he recovers in 2024 because currently we are not blessed with good home grown half backs.

Re: Catalans (GF) : Tue Oct 17, 2023 2:56 pm  

Itchy Arsenal wrote:

Saints fans still think of Smithies pre Peet.
He is light years ahead of that now with good handling skills and he’s cut down on the penalties. The best LF in SL by a country mile and I will be very surprised if he doesn’t make it in the NRL. Personally I would have liked Smithies to stay but irrespective of contract terms it’s almost impossible for good young players to resist the lure of the NRL. I think that Smithies isn’t married and has no children so he can concentrate on just himself to make the move a success.
Knowles their chosen one is a very fit athlete but one dimensional and his future will be the grunt prop for Saints unless they find a decent new prop before the start of the 2024 season.

I like Dodd although as everyone agrees he has lost a lot of ability since his major injury. Form an international point of view I hope that he recovers in 2024 because currently we are not blessed with good home grown half backs.

The other factor in Dodd’s downturn in form is that Lomax has been a shadow of his former self.

Re: Catalans (GF) : Tue Oct 17, 2023 3:10 pm  

Interestingly, the crowd for the GF was only 2,500 less than Saints v Leeds got the year before and a massive 13,000 more than the Saints v Catalans generated in 2021. Well done the guys and gals from Wigan, still the biggest draw in RL.

Re: Catalans (GF) : Tue Oct 17, 2023 3:13 pm  

Zig wrote:

The other factor in Dodd’s downturn in form is that Lomax has been a shadow of his former self.

Lomax and Dodds downturns may also because the Saints pack have lost the big advantage they had.
Roby was coming to an end Walmsley didn't look as dominant last season and this one seemed even more past his peak at his best he was worth two forwards or more, LMS also couldn't feed off his dominance, Pasi injured back end who was looking their best forward and even the yards Perci and Tommy make don't look so damaging now. Obviously they put a lot into the start of season but looked like a old boxer on the ropes who's had a few to many fights, although still hanging in with the chance of landing a good punch. Maybe a good long off season will see them refreshed but it does feel like it's the end of an era maybe.

Re: Catalans (GF) : Tue Oct 17, 2023 3:19 pm  

Zig wrote:

Interestingly, the crowd for the GF was only 2,500 less than Saints v Leeds got the year before and a massive 13,000 more than the Saints v Catalans generated in 2021. Well done the guys and gals from Wigan, still the biggest draw in RL.

Bit weird to be trying to use the 2021 final as a feather in your cap when travel restrictions meant Catalan couldn’t bring as much as they could have and many people were still very wary about leaving their homes and going to mass gatherings etc. you also had 58k more than the 2020 final, impressive!

58k is a decent enough crowd tbf. Could have been worse. I would however expect a fairly decent following when it’s your first final in 5 years and your fans are by and large confident of a win. I do think last year’s crowd was pretty poor too, tho I don’t think it held much intrigue as a contest and fair weather saints fans were probably a bit blase about it by then and I doubt many neutrals would have wanted go for what was always very likely to be yet another saints victory.

Would have been interested to see what the crowd would have been for a Wigan v Saints final this year though. Really think the rivalry, positivity around Wigan, nervousness about the result from both sides, neutral intrigue etc could have led to the biggest crowd for a long time. Ah well. Maybe next year!

Re: Catalans (GF) : Tue Oct 17, 2023 3:21 pm  

Fwiw even as a Saints fan I’m fairly happy you won. Not personally perse, but I’m fairly happy that the negative tactics of us and Catalan came unstuck this year and the title went to a team playing good rugby all season. Could really do with the game moving on from some of the turgid displays put on in big games the last few years