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.

I hope we have finally got wise to the Wellens running on Graham's shoulder waiting for the off load routine.

Quite simple, really. The players just do 2 things.
1. Keep mistakes down to a minimum.
Great sides (which Saints are) always seem to punish mistakes by the opposition, with a try in the ensuing set of 6 tackles. Wigan were masters of this, when they were in their pomp of the early 90's.

2. Keep penalties to a minimum, too
This links in with the point above

You starve sides like Saints of the ball, and they struggle.

Judging by our performance at Wembley (apart from the opening 10-15 mins) we gave Leeds little ball possession, especially in our half, so, we went on to win.

We keep our 10-20 metre zone (from our try line) tight, and we'll win the game.

Everybody labels Saints as the great entertainers (which they are), but I'll wager the majority of their tries are scored from plays WITHIN 10 metres of the opposition try-line. I'd say the majority of ours (this season) are outside - without having Phil Clarke to back me up on this stat.

Do the basics right, which we didn't do at home a few weeks back, and we'll win.

Can we also hire that tuppeny ha'penny hypnotist Paul McKenna, to get inside our player's heads, and tell them that they're invincible at Knowsley Road

Will you shusshhh!! Good god man your talking like there is a gaping chasm of ability between the two sides and there clearly isn't.

Argueably, Warrington ARE a better side that your lot regardless of league position. I know you'll come back with 'could of, should of, would have' arguements but Warrington should have beaten Saints twice this year. There was only a number of missed kicks between us at your place and even though you won by two points, we WERE the better team at the HJ. We gifted you 4 points and if the game had been even just 60 seconds longer I am 100% sure we'd have got another score.

And its very convenient you chose this stage of the season to refer to the league ladder to justify your 'Saints are better than Warrington' arguement rather than the previous 25 / 26 rounds when we have been up to 6 points infront of you!!

We ARE a better team than Saints, we know we can beat your lot, its just a mental thing preventing us!

So ner!!

Try and slow their ptb down and keep an eye on Wellens hitting the line.

In the SL game at the HJ our marker defence was poor and Roby tore us to pieces. The other problem we had was that we kept forcing passes in near impossible positions which simply handed Saints possession. Cut out the errors and sort out the defence around the play the ball and we've got a great chance.