Is this time of year we all climb up Wigan's backside and acclaim them as "the team to beat" again?

Much like people have been doing for the last two years.

I agree , in fact taking two points of Saints at any time regardless of injuries or whatever in their camp is always welcome . Hopefully the team will be fully focused on tomorrow night , next weeks game will take care of itself .

Looking at the Wigan game will it benefit Wigan in the long run that they have had unopposed training sessions the last few months?

Since losing to us they've faced the "challenges" of Widnes, Saints, Hull KR, Wakefield, Bradford, Leigh, Hull, Salford, KR (again) and London. Some of our usual doom and gloom merchants may be ready to concede to Wigan but I'll wait and see until they play someone willing to put up an effort.

Big question is will Tomkins have the bottle to face us?

Wigan looked really good on Saturday at the stoop...but TBH so would Chapeltown U11s (London started badly and somehow contrived to get worse throughout the game). Yes it's around now we all start drooling over how great Wigan are and start lauding the genius of the thoroughly objectionable Wigan coaching team headed up by that gracious gentleman Shaune Wane

you forgot to say how great sam tomkins is running at these "defenses"...

Vickery, Sutcliffe, and Singleton all in contention to play tonight according to BM. He also mentions Baldwinson could play in the coming weeks.

Well he's blobbed the last 2 meeting and defeats.

Wigan will be keen to get him out there, but a certain Leeds pack man will be even keener if you've heard the same rumours as I have. A rumour which started just before the Wigan away game in the play-offs last year.

As I commented on recently Leeds have had a poor recent record of giving the then present Academy players an opportunity in the Leeds first team. Apart from the 2008 season it's been almost quota like with the figure set at a maximum of two a season since 2006.

2006 - Danny Williams, Jordan Tansey
2007 - Ryan Hall
2008 - Luke Burgess, Ben Kaye, Danny Allan, Ben Jones-Bishop, Kallum Watkins, Joe Chandler, Michael Haley
2009 - Paul McShane, Dane Manning
2010 - Tom Bush, Chris Clarkson
2011 - Brad Singleton, George Elliott
2012 - Liam Hood, Stevie Ward (Jimmy Keinhorst ? )
2013 - ?

I don't imagine running the Academy set-up comes particularly cheap and it's an essential source of producing players for the wider game and Leeds have had an unmovable core group who have delivered much over that time ..... but looking at that purely from a Leeds 1st grade point of view you have to wonder whether the investment has been worth it.

Out of interest, why the question mark after keinhorst's name?

Suttcliffe will make his debut tonight.

If he makes the 17 then you'd hope so.

Would be an anti-climax for the lad if he's 'sub not used'.

I couldn't recall exactly how he arrived at Leeds (or at what age) and whether he should - or shouldn't, hence the ? - make the list as a Leeds academy produced player that made it all the way to 1st grade at Headingley.

In or out it doesn't make much of dint.

"How many make their first team debut" is a horribly skewed and ineffective measure of the productivity of an Academy system.

It can be affected significantly by any number of external factors, such as injury crises or the success of the first team incumbents.

Surely a more effective measure is how many of them go on to make a regular first team place their own? Even allowing for player turnover, you would only expect one or maybe two per season to break through and do so.

Hall, Jones-Bishop, Watkins, Ward and arguably McShane and Clarkson have done so over that period, despite being faced with highly successful incumbents, many of whom were themselves the products of the same Academy system.