Saints

Souths by plenty unfortunately.

IF Souths win tonight making it a clean sweep for the Aussie teams, will this be detrimental to having an expanded WCC series ?
IF the 3 Aussies clubs, who are still in pre season and have been dragged half way around the world to play English clubs on home soil and they all win, what does this mean for future games.
Especially with such an apathetic Aussie audience, who generally speaking, haven't been too interested in this "competition".

Of course, over here, the English RL public have certainly bought into the concept and the games have attracted decent crowds (20000+ at Wigan and 13000 at Wire, plus a sell out at Langtree Park.

Where can this idea realistically go, unless the Aussies want a shorter domestic season, which isn't likely to happen (unless we do away with the 4N, or play alternate seasons)

I have enjoyed the 2 games thoroughly, both intense tight affairs in the balance to the end.With a bit more control of the ball Wire and Wigan would have won imo.You can't tell me the Aussies didn't want to win either, last ditch tackles and St george were going for a drop goal with 8 minutes to go! I was unsure about the concept before hand but hope we keep it, whatever the result tonight.

Nobody flies half way round the world to play a game they don't want to win.

thought souths would destroy saints but looking at the weather and the homeground advantage then I can only presume a saints win

You would think so but judging by the England cricket team at the moment I'm not sure.

souths for me, they have a very good set of forwards even without SB and they have the edge in the halves, and there's some dude at fullback i can't quite remember the name of

really looking forward to seeing two of the world's best hookers up against each other though

they do have dodgy weather over there too

Silverwood looking after Souths nicely

Of course they are playing to win, they are all pro sportsmen.

However, do you accept that they would have bee even better, had they had 2 rounds of their domestic comp.
The answer is clearly yes.

IF we want ot have a "fair" comp, then surely the answer is to start both leagues (English and Australian)at the same time.
Just imagine what the disparity would be if the English clubs hadn't had a couple of games already.

Maybe a slight edge but come on its only 2 freakin games and a lot of the NRL players coming over have probably had more intense warm up games than some of the SL sides have had leading in here i mean take that joke at Salford last week for Saints! (of course that is now showing).

The way some go on here we are half way through our season playing these games.

Also, why do people get so narked about us having to have a slight edge to even it up a bit? YES we need home advantage and a couple of games to make it more of a contest but crikey, The NRL player pool is huge in comparison, they take our very best and also have a huge difference in cap.there is no shame in being a clear 2nd to there league.Just enjoy this concept for what it is.