Hopefully so , our squad has more experience with fa'aologo, Gilmour etc who have played in more big games than most players.
We destroyed Saints in the Semi final last year because Brown installed a 'you can beat them' attitude into the players and i think knowing we can beat the 'big boys' will only envourage our players when playing the likes of Leeds and Saints.

We were stuffed 34-6 in april 2009. by June it was 20 -12 (with you scoring an interception try in the last minute, so a very close game). So a good indication that there was less 'awe' 3 months later. Time will tell.

On the evidence seen so far the answer might well be in the affirmative

There have been comments on here about pace and attack but imo these are the best two defences in super league and I am looking forward to to a very hard defence based game and i would be suprised if either team scored more than three tries

The defences were outstanding with not many attacking opportunities.

Exactly - we haven't conceded over 20 points in a game since Bradford put 28 past us on the 16th August last year and before that it was Salford in May !! so only twice in the league in the last 10 months - thats some defence and Leeds' attack will have to be really good to break that down !

Giants will be without B. Hodgson, Kirkmond, Mason, Drew, Finnegan and potentially Wild still out but with talk of Horne going out on loan to Castleford he may be back in contention.

Spot on.

Don't forget that the Hudds attack will have to be really good too there aren't many teams in the world who can keep Melbourne tryless for a half of rugby

Yeh it would have been interesting to see how many they'd have scored though if they were into thier season.

True, I just wish the WCC was played during both team's seasons so the convicts can't use the excuse when they lose. But would the English club have had the upperhand overall if the games had been played during both teams seasons?

The thing is they are all Aussies, so they will continue to use any excuse available to them when they lose. Melbourne will be the best in the world, without question now in their eyes, but if the Aussie team loses next season they will conveniently forget that and talk about the fact it was in the UK, poor weather, out of season and should be moved to Sydney one week after their Grand Final to make it fair and the Aussies side is still better and lost for all of those reasons.

For what it is worth, I think that in the last decade or so, most of the Aussies sides have taken it deadly seriously and Melbourne (both times) and Manly took it very seriously indeed.

I am perplexed as to why this game didn't make the Sky schedules, looks like the tie of the round to me and neither Huddersfield nor Leeds can be called 'surprise packages' this season so far!

TBH i'm glad it's not as our attendances take a massive drop when we're on SKY.