I think the strength of a competition could be judged by the strength of its bottom sides. The top of sl at the minute is who is the 'least rubbish' rather than who is best. The standard of sl has dropped dramatically and I don't see how that has benefitted us when we've been in, and still are, a position to attract top class players if we could.

Me too. Left Makinson as kicker in my Fantasy team :/. Let's hope Bridge kicks well tomorrow.

I notice the posts saying the rounds before the play offs are meaningless have dried up now wire are struggling a little!

The standard is shocking, it's as simple as that. The fact that a run of the mill aussie half back like walsh appears to be head and shoulders above anyone else in the competition says it all. Although the clowns on sky would have you believe he is some sort of langer/johns hybrid player. Saints might have improved from last year, but not so long ago they had overseas players like lyon and gidley in their team. Plus british players such as sculthorpe and cunningham. The fact is, since sculthorpe retired there has been no british player(playing in our competition) who would get near to selection in the australian side, so how can we say the standard is better? And please nobody say its just because the aussies have got so much better. They have always had world class players, its just that we no longer produce many who can match them.

There was a tackle then play the ball in the Saints Broncos game yesterday that was of a standard that I haven't seen at Televised level before.

the tackle of a broncos forward was ordinary and the tackled player just stood around waiting for everyone to give him room he looked around as if to check there was a dummy half and then he played it as if he was showing school kids what a play the ball was for the first time.....

I was genuinely deflated with it, it was so poor.