Well, I think we can put this debate to rest cant we?

I don't think it was a serious debate, Fatbelly was just winding you up.

However now that Leeds have won 6 Grand Finals it does bring up another point. In the 9 year period from 2004 to 2012 have Leeds had better players than Saints did in the 9 year period from say 1999 to 2007? Saints won 4 Grand Finals in that time.

I wonder if Saints, despite enjoying lots of success, underachieved a bit in terms of Super League titles given the players they had?

I can think of two possible reasons. One is that Saints had to deal with a strong Bradford as rivals, Leeds didn't have the same strength in their rivals. The other is that for a lot of that time Saints had a coach (Millward) who was not in the highest class.

The first point about Bradford I'm undecided. They were much bigger than everyone else and had the edge physically until the rest of the teams started to catch up, but if you looked through the Bradford teams back then its hard to see where they were stronger than Saints. Their best players seemed to be poor man's version of Saints, eg Lowes/Cunningham; Forshaw/Sculthorpe; Deacon/Long; Withers/Wellens; Naylor/Newlove. They had a great front row but Saints weren't so bad up front with guys like Fairleigh, Britt either.

I reckon Saints had the best personnel in SL for that nine year period so maybe came up one or two titles short. By 2006 Saints had a coach who was in the highest class. I wonder whether had Anderson taken over from Hanley in 2000 rather than Millward, Saints would have monopolised success like Wigan did the late 1980s and early 1990s.

This isn't a sly way of trying to have a dig at Saints saying they underachieved, I'd have loved us to win 4 SLs, just wanted to hear your views of my theory...

Fair point and I've often thought the same actually - in retrospect I think we were a couple of trophies light in that era considering the incredible players we had and we probably would have won more without Millward (although a lot less entertainingly ). I think it's undoubtedly the case that we had a lot more competition then than Leeds have had the last 5 years as well though - dismiss Bradford all you like but they were an awesome team on their day, could chew up regular season games much more easily than we could with their dominating pack and were always tough to beat come the big games - a bit like a supercharged version of Wigan over the last couple of seasons actually.

Possibly Saints were a couple of GF wins light between 1999 and 2007.

1999-2002 , we won 3 GFs in 4 years; but 2003-7 saw us reach "only" 2 more GFs, winning only one.

However, I think there were mitigating factors .......... 2003 the Bulls were the best side in the comp; but in 2004, 2005 and 2007 we suffered due to the fallout of the betting scandal (possibly) and more than our fair share of serious injuries to key players (definitely) .

I know it's all "ifs" and "maybes", but Scully was battling injuries from 2004 onwards, we were injury ravaged in the 2005 play-offs (who can forget Newton's assaults on Lee Gilmour and Sean Long), etc etc .... I definitely think 2005 was one that got away.

Yes I think 2005 Saints were pretty much as good as they were in 2006. It was just due to injuries at the wrong part of the season that they didn't do it.

For all the 'entertaining' reputation Saints had with Millward, there was something missing. Saints had a blase attitude sometimes and no truly great side should cop 50/70 point thrashings like Millward's Saints copped once a season or so. When Anderson came in there was no more of that, he might not have been a big media personality but he knew how to put discipline and order into a team of great talent and he got awesome results. I think it was a shame for Anderson that he didn't get at least one of the 2007 or 2008 GFs but at least you were always winning Challenge Cups with him.

Also Scully's injury record is a factor here - if Scully had been fit all the time then I reckon you could add a couple more trophies to Saints record in that era.

To be fair under Millward we won the Grand Final in 2000 (we were knocked out of the cup when Hanley was in charge), the WCC and CC in 2001 (hit by big injuries late on - Newlove and Long season enders, Fairleigh had a dislocated shoulder in the Play Offs etc), we reached the CC Final and lost in 2002 but won the GF. 2004 we won the CC but we were then hit by the betting scandal and then he was sacked in 2005. The only bad season under Millward was 2003 where we didn't win anything.

2005 was definitely a season that got away from us though. Apart from the Hull semi final in the cup we dominated most teams that season until injuries hit us at the end. We deserved a GF win that year and made sure we avenged it the season after. 2008 was another that got away. 19 or 20 games unbeaten, finished top by a mile, win the Cup but bottled it at Old Trafford when we trounced Leeds two weeks earlier. That was probably the most frustrating GF loss of all of them as we were better than Leeds that season. That was the night Anderson completely lost it with the players at half time, they let him down that night.

I remember reading sean long's book and in it on the 2008 grand final, he said something along the lines of ''this was our game and we were going to win it saints style''.

The problem was it chucked it down and saints didn't adapt. In fact i think it was that game that spawned the whole ''leeds only champions in the rain'' and the theory that leeds play well in wet weather. To date that is the only grand final leeds have won where it has rained significantly during the game.

That was without doubt the one that got away from saints. Everything was set up for a saints win, DA's last game, the unbeaten run, leeds relativly poor form (in comparison) leading into the game. I seem to remember saints carving leeds up early doors as well and were a rats hair away from going 2 tries up but gidley was bundled into touch when it looked he would score.

I think if any game created saints complex with grand finals, it was that. I don't think the players that played ever psychologically recovered.

Agreed. Similarly, I feel that 2010 was the one that got away for us (Leeds). Despite beating Pies at the dome at the first time of asking, injuries to Peacock, Jones-Buchanan and McGuire put the return beyond us. But given we won the preceding three and the subsequent two I'm pretty confident we'd otherwise be looking at a team that had just won six on the bounce.

That said, those injuries weren't the result of foul play (ok, maybe McGuire's was ); so in that respect your failure in 05 can be regarded as more unfortunate.