Personally I am not bothered there are far bigger fishes to fry. It is better that we have all our players onboard when it comes to the crunch, it is not worth risking further injury.

Let's not go down the road of 'but we have more players missing than you' we were on the bare bones for about 3 seasons on the trot and just got on with it even when we got some tonkings along the way. I think we are the only club that doesn't use it as an excuse. That's the Saints way. They are only the best when everyone else is weakened.

4 titles on the spin purely because others weren’t full strength haha. Bitter much?

Hopefully French is just a short term thing. The game obviously matters, a Derby always does but the longer term is far more important and in the grand scheme of things the result tonight won't play too much of a part in the rest of the season. In a strange way, I'm looking forward to seeing how the whole side copes without Field/French and if they can raise their games collectively to try and cover things as best as we can. I hazard a guess that we'll do a far better job than we managed during the Adrian Lam days.

Dont think he is "bitter much" what with Wigan having all the trophies in the cabinet,I am sure he is happy at the min.

Why try and belittle our achievements then? It's an odd comment to make.

French is playing. I'm sure the 'French injured' rumour gets a run out every derby game now.

If Field and French are missing it’ll have to be a workman like performance, similar to Wire (a) and Saints on GF last year ( I know French played them games).

Tight game, Smith will need to kick well and hopefully manufacture some points, giving Wardle plenty of ball would be the way to go imo.

It's definitely something I think, probably as a coping mechanism



Saints consistency was unbelievable but Wigan and Leeds were pretty awful during that period.

Warrington were alright and managed to stop you winning a couple of cups, could never back it up in the play offs though.

I do think that Saints team would have been good in any era obviously, the Penrith win was particularly hard to argue with. I just don't think they would have been [ias[/i dominant and like to add a couple of asterisks to the 4 in a row.

If wigan win everything this year will that make them the best single season super league team of all time? No one will have won all 4 in one year, but other teams might have had tougher opposition in previous years.

OK, so we put asterisks next to Saints acheivements because our competition wasn't at their best. But if Wigan win everything this year it's the best achievement ever, despite the fact Saints are nowhere near their best and are widely reported on here to be on the decline? Surely you see there's a tad of hypocrisy there.

Either our achievements from 2019-2022 were phenomenal, full stop. Or Wigan's achievements this year were only because Saints are on the downward slope. Which is it?



EDIT: I misread your final paragraph - I thought you had said it WOULD be the best single season ever. To answer your question - quite possibly yes. And I would never try and play that down by saying it's because Saints were crap.Hence why I find it so ridiculous when Wigan fans try to play down what we did 2019-2022.

French is on the Official Clubs Twitter game day post and they have also posted a clip of him in action on another post. You’d guess he would be playing based off that with a little troll at the rumour, or maybe it’s just a bluff?

Honestly, when i watched the game back on tele i thought French chose to go down as he didn't want to potentially run the full length when the game was effectively over. He looked like he was grinning at the Leigh defender as he did it.

I imagine using Bevan's picture in the game day graphic is also, as you say, the club's way of dispelling the rumour without outright addressing it.