So if it wasn't an issue, why have people been flagging it up since before the end of the successful 2006 season?

Since the penny dropped that we were being short changed in terms of entertainment, we have actually won seven pieces of silverware.

Saints are playing little differently than we did under Anderson, contrary to belief. Our beef is not with the style we are playing per se, it's the overall change of the Rugby Leagie product from one where teams (generally) took risks, threw the ball about and entertained the public, rather than bashing it down the middle.

Teams and coaches no longer try to score from anywhere on the park, they merely try to attain field position so that they can be closer to the line to plough over.

Rugby League has effectively gone down the avenue that the Leeds United and Arsenal football teams did in the 70s and the way the Italians have always played that game. Whereas the emphasis used to be primarily on attack minded football, it is now defensive minded. The moves and set-plays are predictable, everyone knows what is going to happen next but no-one cares as long as they don't concede. No-one tries to outscore the opposition, they simply contain the opposition and just hope something eventually happens at the other end.

All as I know is that I know not just Saints supporters but a good sprinkling of Wigan and Warrington ones too and the complaint is always the same. For the first 18 years of me watching the game, from 1987 to 2005, I could count the number of games I was bored at on one hand. Even one-sided games provided thrilling bouts of spell-binding rugby. Over the last three or four years, at least half the games I have been to have bored me out of my skull and it's exactly the same when I watch other teams play on Sky. Watch a tries compilation and 95% are the same as the last one. Play-the-ball, one pass to the side, crash over. Hurrah! What fun.

The game is now every bit as boring as the one that Union fans used to accuse it of being. It's simply thirteen blokes bashing into each other. A bit of trench warfare where you can hope to gain a bit of territory now and again on the rare occasions that the skill-less fookers actually manage to keep hold of the ball or the one solitary pass to the side doesn't get hopelessly and needlessly mis-directed.

I enjoyed the game significantly more, when we won nothing in the early 90s, than I have done the last four seasons when we have won a significant amount of silverware. Trophies are not everything to us, as it would appear to be for you lot, and I don't get blinkered into thinking the game is fantastic entertainment just because we happen to finally have a properly succesful period for the first time since the late 1960s/early 1970s. I just want to enjoy the eighty minutes spectacle and not be bored rigid. We beat Wigan in the semi-final and I wasn't excited, I just felt disappointment that not even that game could bring some entertainment.

I am very disillusioned with the sport over here at the moment but there was some hope for me as I watched the latter NRL games where there was some attempt at least by some players to try something different.

My real hope is that the Aussies and Kiwis come here, show us a display of attacking football and give us a right royal thumping or two because the only way we will shake the game up in this country is for us to see that the sterile crap we are all producing is only going to take us further behind and drive the fans away in their droves. Whether they have the inclination to entertain while they can simply walk through us wih negative tactics, remains to be seen.

At the end of the day, negative, defensive Rugby League has been found to be more effective than positive, attacking, flair play and that's what frightens me with regard to the future of this game.

I've been in love with the sport for 22 years but I can see that, in a few years time, I may not be able to take what has happened to the former greatest game any more. It's too painful to see what has happened to the game I loved.

I've watched RL for 30 years and I have never seen a winger hoof the ball in the air from the touchline on halfway to be caught mid-field by the stand off, who then raced away to score under the sticks. That try against Cats was the first time I'd ever seen that. My jaw hit the floor. It had skill, pace and it took real flair to even imagine you could pull it off - let alone in a playoff semi-final. What else do they want? Oh..of course, they don't want to watch Leeds doing it.

Oh goodie. The game is saved. Long live the Rhinos.

You actually scored three great tries that game, to be fair.

As it happened though I saw a Saints prop, Brett Goldspink, burst down the flank and kick in field for one of our players to score in more or less the same fashion, in 1998.

Look, we can all point to the odd incident which will prove which ever point you want to make, like there were undoubtedly terribly boring games in 1989 but, generally, such exciting passages of play are significantly lesser than they once were. The game, as a whole, is dreary and even close matches have a mildly sedative effect. I bet there were neutrals nodding off with one point in it in the Grand Final.

I'd rather trawl through the contents of an elephants bowels.

I think you just lost any argument you had.

signed

Actually, your reply, being the weakest counter-argument in the history of counter-arguing, just won it for me.

but 10 years ago, you were turning up most weeks to see saints put 50-60 on teams like halifax and oldham. That's entertaining once in a while, but every other week? Winning at a canter is not what I want. Thats probably why there was more flair when the big teams met, because they were used to flinging the ball around.

I'm afraid all that you bemaon is the effects of proffessionalism. Its the same reason we don't get as many fights these days.

I personally like a good arm wrestle of a game, but we have (for whatever reason) gone a bit far with how much the play the ball has been slowed, or just failed to cope with the change.
However, in the next couple of years, the crafty half backs may get to grips with playing aginst this type of defences.

I agree. I think it has perhaps slowed down too much, but it'll probably take time for teams to adjust and for halfbacks to develop their craft according to the defence. Personally I found 42-26 type scorelines deeply frustrating, as they usually came about due to poor execution from both sides rather than excellence.

I agree that we do not want to be seeing those one-sided romps but that wasn't the case every week was it? Certainly in the early 1990s it wasn't. We saw many a close game that still allowed for attacking rugby league rather than stagnating, dour, defensive tactics.

At least when the Australians went down that road in the 1980s, the pundits and the fans had the honesty and brains to take their heads out of the sands and see that the 4-2 close games were not entertaining because they were close, they were dour because they were playing safety first, dour rugby.

What we are now seeing is a football eqiavalent of 0-0 and 1-0 results with minimal chances per game and a dour midfield struggle as opposed to 3-3 attack minded draws with chances at both ends and great attacking play. There might have been the odd 5-1 but at least it was with goals, entertainment and thrilling passages of play.

That's the difference you see. Football and even Rugby Union are trying to go and play more open, adventurous football, Rugby League is going the opposite way and it is not going to attract any new fans whatsoever.

I'd like to think that crafty half backs will get to grips with it but, with the game as it is, unfortunately, there won't be any crafty half backs because the evolution of the game will have negated their need. How many crafty half backs does the game have in this country and I mean proper artists like Andy Gregory or Bobbie Goulding were in their prime? The likes of Shane Cooper wouldn't last five minutes these days.

Seventeen robots. That's what we've got.

DD is right.

The game is going progressively more boring and has done soince 2006 since Saints won the lot.

Just about every team runs the same move, and the ridiculously slow PTB has meant that there is the worst of both worlds:

The game has become a turgid, sloppy game that is a parody of muddy pitches in Batley. It is compounded by the over use of interchanges that means the defensive line that rarely stretched because fitness and stanima are in effect redundent, being instead servants to 'power' and 'impact.'

Saints have been dour this year, reflecting the character of their coach; but then again have many other teams been better?

Leeds opened the season with a thoroughly uninspiring victory against Celtic who they should have put 70 on.

Most games have had the same pattern about them.. Plough, plough plough... kick to the corner and try. It is rubbish, quite frankly.

Give me Roy Hagg's offloads, Harry Pinner's brains, Neil Holding's darts and Barrie Lager's speed... At least this was a brand of rugby that depended on variation. And it was one where there were not 17 players, for the most, who could play most positions on the field.

Unfortunately we have gone from a SL that was entertaining but flawed due to an over emphasis - rule wise - on attack, to one that is listless due to an over emphasis on defense.

The play the balls when the players you mentioned played were ten times slower than they are now. there was loads of garbage at the ruck. Ball stealing, striking for the ball etc. It was a mess. They also played when the defence went back 5 metres not ten. I think you're looking back with rose tinted glasses.

We want half backs as creative as those you mention. We're taking measures to try and create that. Yet you're railing against those measures.

I also still maintain there's a degree of that age old Saints fans' arrogance in all of this. Of course, it just could be a coincidence that this despondency comes after the first year you win no silverwear and on the back of your golden era which "experts" tell us is likely over (I don't believe that but I suspect you will).

Revealing comment.

Why? That season Saints won everything, but is was boring compared to the yesteryear of 1989 and getting to wembley...

I think that says a lot about Saints fans deciding the game is now boring.

Such a lazy and sloppy mentality.

We have come 2nd in the league and had a decent season given that noone thought we would do anything.

The main chagrin is that the rugby was hopelessly dour and crashingly boring to quote a famous Manchester miserablist.