Quote: Wires71 "Because we have all the financial resources of a top club, marquee signings, wealthy generous benefactors, some world class players and a large and passionate support base. I see no reason why a smaller town like St Helens should have a rugby team that is light years ahead of ours.
Why should we not be winning the big prizes? Something is wrong.'"
The salary cap should mean that we have a level playing field, at least among the teams who can spend up to the full cap, so the trophies should be spread around. The interesting thing is that three of these teams always win Super League and neither us nor any of the other clubs who are comparably well resourced ever do.
The other interesting thing is that all three of those teams have gone through dips when they have fallen behind us and they have all rebuilt and come back to overtake us again.
I think if you're going to be a consistent trophy winning side you need all these aspects of the organisation to be top class:
- First team coaching / conditioning
- Recruitment
- Academy development
- Identification of junior talent
We've probably been top class on the first of those from around 2009 to 2014 and on the second from around 2007 to 2012, which overlapped with us winning 3 Challenge Cups, but really we need to be in a position where we can say four out of four are top class. The three teams that swap the SL trophy between them are generally at four out of four with the odd blip when they drop in one or two of them before they fix them again.
