Featherstone will have big rugged forwards as well. Dickens probably weighs as much as those two combined. They are no mugs, there are several former SL players in their squad and quite a few who are capable of playing at SL level.

They won't be used to coming up against the combination of size and athleticism that we'll still have in the pack, despite injuries. I still suspect we'll win reasonably comfortably, but there's no doubt it's as good a chance as any for a Championship club to get the scalp of a big SL club.

I reckon its an 80% chance of a Saints win, but it's sport and your head and your players have to be right for the game. If we are mean in defence for the first 40 then that should exhaust any Championship side to take the sting out of the initial on slaught.

But if it's competitive from the first 10 minutes then it could be as close as the halifax bradford game.

I hope you are right. But with only Jammer and LMS as props for the game, it's hard to see how any rotation policy is going to work.

We had Ade Gardner rotating into the second row in that game and we're going to be 1 or 2 men down from that. I just hope the academy debutants Royce is talking about will be physically up to playing against the rough and ready skullduggery of the Championship players.

Indeed. I'd be tempted to use Soliola as a rotation prop for this game. That would at least give us a bit of physical presence coming off the bench. We can only hope that the Gardner-in-the-back-row thing was purely down to the fact that we lost a man in the warm-up and were restricted in our options. Presumably we'll be able to dip into our reservoir of unspectacular yet reasonably dependable young back rowers to get us through this one. Or perhaps Ben Karalius will get a game, allowing Wilkin to move back into the pack.

Have we seen a 19 man squad yet?
To be fair, it might be a good day to get Karalius involved.

Should be released by the end of the day. They are up to 15 names now, hopefully be a couple more once the triage nurse has done her rounds.

2pm

Definitely worth a few pounds on fev to beat the handicap, and a fiver on an upset could even pay off. These two cup games have come at the perfect time or we would almost certainly have dropped 6 league points with the team in this state

it wont be fun, and it wont be pretty - but looking at the 19 man squad, we should have enough to avoid it being a worry.

The Featherstone game is certainly causing excitement on their Forum.

112-nil crowd 4,440.........

Well at least my post got you excited, I could not find any reference to the game on your forum and could not understand why.