Quote: Webbo "Blinkers? I was being pragmatic. If you think Richards IS "electric"; Charnley IS "world class"; Carmont ISN'T past his best; and Goulding IS better than the majority of SL centres, then by all means you be at peace with your beliefs.
Anyway, there are many reasons why a player can appear to make so many clean breaks - sometimes it's the quality of the individual and their ability to beat a player with skill & pace (Tomkins, for example), whilst other times it's the quality of the player(s) inside them (I'd like to see how many clean breaks Ade Gardener made with Lyon as his centre...).
wi*an play a game where their attack involves a lot of ball to the outside backs, with plenty of dummy-running and very good angles. This is always going to create breaks by the three-quarters. It doesn't mean those three-quarters are modern rugby superstars.'"
Come off it. The way you paint this comparison anyone might think we haven't moved the ball toward the backs in years. This is patently absurd. Irrespective of whether you think Saints have played conservatively over the last two or three seasons the fact remains there have been plenty of occasions when we have opened up - runners, angles and all. And yet time after time we have found it enormously difficult to score tries from outside the 40m mark. So much so I almost fell off my chair when Meli scored that 70 yarder the other week.
Wigan, on the other hand, seem to score long-distance tries with great regularity. Yes, many of them are down to clever tactics, good distribution etc. But many others are purely down to pace, acceleration, elusiveness and guile. Words which are rarely used in the company of Meli, Gardner, Shenton & Wellens.
Is this a "world beating" Wigan back line? Aside from Tomkins - no. But then it doesn't need to be in order to beat ours.