Quote bramleyrhino="bramleyrhino"Agree with this.
I said on another thread that, in patches, Wigan, Wire and St Helens all looked capable against their respective opposition. Forget the arguments about preparation, flights, weather, etc - all three teams showed that they could compete to a degree with the NRL sides.
In all three games the SL teams made mistakes that, in all probability, wouldn't be punished. Similarly, Souths today made mistakes that in the NRL, probably would have been punished.
What has let the SL sides down this weekend is the fact that, for about three years, the top sides have had nowhere near the level of week in, week out intensity that the NRL teams experience. We have talked at length in that time about teams being able to coast into the play-offs, play badly and win, and 'peak at the right time'. Teams in Australia are instinctively ruthless, because their competition demands that they are. The Super League doesn't demand the same because, in all likelihood, if you make a mistake, the team you are playing isn't good enough to punish it.
That isn't an issue of salary cap per se, it's an issue of having a competition that doesn't demand the best of its clubs, its an issue of letting the tail wag the dog and its an issue of too many clubs being too badly run for too long. When we have 12+ clubs that can regularly compete, we'll have teams that aren't suddenly shocked when they come up against the best in the world - at both club and international level.'"
You can call it club bias all you want, but had Warrington not turned up to the weirdest reffing performance ever(tonight's being somewhat different) than I think we could have took a close win.
People have said we were dumb for not adapting, but it would have been our luck to start lying on and then thaler deciding to blow his whistle
