Being a great sporting team is about both consistency and performing under pressure. The Super League system rewards teams who can do both - and that is the mark of a champion team.

Teams who can perform under pressure are rewarded in the Challenge Cup - Warrington are a good pressure side but not a consistent one - hence why they got rewarded in the CC and didn't even make the playoffs in the league.

I said World class Not american or commonwealth

Of course it isn't , if Celtic had won at the Magic weekend it all could have been so different

I couldn't give a rats harris about wether we have play offs or not , it is the rules at the start so those are the rules wether I like them or not , but it still is the preserve of second class sports

If those are the second class sports, what are the first class sports?
Always had you down as a leagie, not a soccer fan

Basketball and ice hockey are a lot more popular gloablly than you obviously realise.

If you were from St Helens youd probably just be happy to finish a game down the road with your mates and get back in time to mow the lawn and have dinner with the mrs.

That's why we're so s**t at international level, half our most talented players aren't winners.

Not just St Helens, the whole of the UK 75% of our young people play no sport of any kind & probablly have a note of thier mam to prove it.

Nah. Rugby league is a sport we're terrible at because and only because so few people play the sport. I grew up in Warrington, supposedly in the heartlands of the game. How many kids here play the sport? How many schools do? None of the schools I went to did and no one in the schools I went to played it that I know of. Football was and still is everything, it's all consuming. I was a very good athlete at school, running for England twice in my early teens in the 200 and four times in the 400m and playing semi pro football. Never once did anyone suggest I play league and I didn't even know where it was played so never picked a ball up in anger.

I may not have been the English Greg Inglis myself but those who would have been are playing right back for the Nags Head blissfully unaware of their unfulfilled destiny. Thats just in Warrington, the same can be said right across the country.

Add to that the fact that it's dark after school for half of the year, the weather is terrible and it's all about 'not being competitive' at school and it's a miracle we're any good at anything.

I grew up in Warrington too and never saw RL been played at Schools level - however I now have kids myself and the situation is very different due in no small part to the excellent schools community programme run by the Warrington club.

Kids will continue to be lazy-asses when the only "sports" they see promoted on TV are virtual games on the Wii.

Call me old fashioned, but WTF?

Every night as kids our mums used to have to interupt our "jumpers for goalposts" footie games and drag us back home after dark to send us to bed.

This was only 30 years ago.

The future is grim for the state of peoples health in general, not just the production of future sports stars. Teach kids a healthy lifestyle and they grow up with that mentality and become less of a strain on our NHS in the future.

If I was from St Helens my computer would be stolen, I'd be unemployed, I'd be missing teeth and my wife would have more tattoos than I do!

Stop dreaming! We can't afford to get married in St Helens.

Please move to St Helens

Instead of Wife I should have said punching bag.

I am sorry about that!

And the results from all the Grand Finals -bar one - since the competition began have been contested between the teams finishing in the top two places of the league.
You could also say that with the skewing of the fixture list over the last few years and the fact that the league leadership has been decided by the odd point or two for the same period(apart from 2004 of course), that actually the lead leaders shield does not clearly define the Champion team. Champion teams perform on big occasions, that's what sport is all about.