Your defence is far from laughable. It's our defence that has been laughable! The one element of your game that consistently let you down in the past was defence and Smith has tightened that up no end without spoiling your expansive style of play.

I think it's because our styles are so similar and the fact that both teams always put 100% into the games that the Saints-Wire matches are always so good to watch.

That your players don't get injured because they are somehow better conditioned is a myth created on here by children. You cannot condition someone so that they don't suffer physical injury, it's not yet possible. It's just bad luck, nothing more.

I conditioned my hands not to get broken by punching water instead of bricks.

Good for you. But if Tony Puletua and Keiron Cunningham jumped up and down on said hand with studs on, it would still break.

Wire's record this season is just down to luck. Leeds have had similar years. Bridge got a semi-serious injury this season, there is nothing to stop that happening to four or five players next year.

We have had our fair share of injuries this season - just that we have coped better than in previous seasons - league games only:

Carvell - broken leg - missed 8
Bridge - shoulder op - missed 9
Myler - knee op missed 7
Clarke - ankle - missed 20
Grix - various - missed 5
Higham - broken thumb - missed 7

Briers and Monaghan have also missed a few games - part inury, part rest

The good sign is that none of the injuries have been caused by poor conditioning / warm up - we have had very few pulls / strains etc

But lets concentrate on saints injurIes - they are the only team with such setbacks this year - what a shame !!

We all know, that IF we win, all the pundits will put it down to is the injury list Saints have.

Some quarters tried it in the CC Final, bringing up Peacock's absence etc. Its just a good job there were more level-headed people there who admitted we frankly blew Leeds off the park.

People have already said that if we believe we can, we will beat them. I think this is true. Throw all this hoodoo rubbish out and just get the job done lads. We can enjoy the week off then

How do we beat them-for a start lets have no mistakes, dropped balls, lying on, 100% completion rate. Don't make things easy for them.

Yep. That's how we normally fail at KR.

Minimise the mistakes and take your chances.

Don't try to score with every play, complete are sets, build and maintain pressure. Work Graham to death. They'll keep him on and he'll be a turnstyle late on.

Saints are still a better side than us. It's difficult to argue otherwise. Luck (and some excellent work by the conditioners. physios, dietician etc) has meant that although we have had injuries, we haven't had a raft of them at the same time.

Saints have and they still finished 2nd. Thats a big achievement and I they deserve credit for that. I reckon the opinion of Potter held by many Saints fans has changed a lot based on this season.

We we're at this point a few months ago at the HJ. Saints on paper were beatable. However Benny lacked the composure to tie the game, Monaghan lacked the composure on that 5th tackle and we coughed up possession for a try. We had opportunities to still win that game but the final pass wasn't there.

Saints have the compusre, experience and mentality to grind out wins against us. On a few occasions they murdered us around the ruck and backed up the break/half break incredibly well (as always) to punish us. If we can **cliche alert** win the collision and stop them getting that go forward around the ruck then we are in with a chance. I think we can do that and can create enough opportunities to win the game. We all know that what we struggle with is killing off the game when we have a lot of possession and not making errors for Saints to capitalise on. I would compare Saints to Manchester United in their abailty to get that crucial score when they have to, especially very late in the game.

We can win this if we can be composed enough, can win the collission and don't let them off load as the receiver of the off load will have two players bursting through a gap beside him. I'm not going to make a prediction as iv'e thought that it was going to be "our day" since that narrow defeat at the HJ in 2004.

We'll see what happens.