Saints may not be what they were five or six years ago but they will top Wire in the League and the Cup next year.
Wire have 10 or 11 out of their first 17 over 30 and during the next three years will have to replace them all.
At some point next season one of those players, or more, will find out it's a season too far. Smith needs to get his recruitment on track.

1 Wigan,
2 Saints,
3 Hudds,
4 Wire/Leeds

........2 of the most promising youngsters signed up for big money, Myler & Atkins, youngsters coming through, Riley, Harrison, various others, Eastmond being signed when Briers retires....the future is a lot brighter than you believe....

You're right they weren't. Well done.
[sizeI'm not a wire fan[/size

i don't recall the pies at wembley this year either! goodness it must be hard for you getting through the day!

Warrington's season depends on injuries, I think you can admit that you don't have the squad quality in depth to deal with the amount of injuries that the other top 4 teams have had this year and still win a trophy. Most of you 1-13 being over 30 does not help either.

We saw Veteran players such as Peacock and Gidley fade massively this year, How long can Briers, Morley, Hodgson, Solomona, King, Hicks etc continue to play at the level they have been for Warrington?

I still rate your 1-17 up with the best, the coaches and conditioners will have their work cut out to keep them fit IMO.

This business about Warrington being an ageing side is being overplayed by other fans. Look at Briers, he's a better player now than he was a few years ago when other clubs fans were clamouring for him to be in the GB side ahead of Long and McGuire. Four years ago when we signed Morley, other clubs fans confidently told us that we had been 'done' by offering him a four year deal, everyone else wanted him but only on a two year deal so they said we were welcome to him because he was past his best and so on, at the end of his first season he was GB's best player in the Test series, then in his 3rd and 4th seasons he was shortlisted for MoS and lifted 2 Challenge Cups.

Over the next few years some of these players will retire (or sign for other clubs, which will then be amusing to see their fans telling us how they are 'still top players') so we will have to recruit new players but that's nothing out of the ordinary, you get the same problems if you have a young squad again because of the salary cap.....players who signed 2/3 year contracts a couple of years ago on £30k a year (say) when they were bright young talents, now come to renegotiation time, have union clubs chasing them and are internationals, so now they command salaries of £90-100k and you can't fit them all in under the cap. Teams like Leeds, Bradford and Saints have faced this in the past.

Always be careful of writing off older players, we wrote off Gleeson and Fielden and then thought it was hilarious when Wigan signed Deacon as well.....they had the last laugh.

All these Wigan fans are right. Our team is made up of old age cripples with brittle bones. We will never ever end up near the top of a table of teams who suffered least injuries.

We need some young kids who are able to play through injuries and recover quickly, like that Mossop from Wigan and Eastmond from Saints.

Have you been lucky with injuries this year?

Wigan too, have been lucky in respect to key players, but we've had our fair share of injuries.

No we have not been lucky. We have targeted our recruitment on players mature enough to look after themselves away from the pitch and who are professional enough to manage injuries so they can play through them.

It appears the better we get at minimising injuries the luckier we get with injuries.

So if (for example) a player wraps his leg around a post in the process of scoring a try and tears his PCL that's because he's immature and not professional enough to manage said injury and play through it?

No it means its the rugby Gods getting their own back because he was doing the dirty on his wife behind her back. At least that's what Phil Clarke would probably have us believe.

So maybe at last the myth that we were 'unlucky' with injuries under Paul Cullen is being broken.

Cullen was signing players like Bridge and Morley who had bad injury records, so no wonder they got injured! At least since he's gone we have targeted guys like Carvell, Mathers and Solomona who have proven themselves to be durable and unlikely to suffer injuries.

... um, it was Talau ...


We haven't had pace on the fringes since 2006 so I don't know which Saints team it is that you've been watching!


Sean Long hasn't been missed at all this year. However, we lost the second of our halfbacks at the CC semi so since then we have played without our halfbacks. I wonder how far Warrington would have got without their halfbacks? We still made it to the GF. But Pryce has been in superb form and has led the team around the park very well. Eastmond is still learning his trade. We also have another very good halfback in Jonny Lomax. The one thing that is missing from our halfbacks is a kicking game. It exists, but when Matty Smith played for us against you in the playoffs, most Saints fans realised what we had been missing for years, even when Longy was still around. But that's the only thing that is missing from our side.


He was never supposed to be.


Nah. It just says we had a coach who didn't know what to do with the players he had, or indeed any players. I mean, what chump would line up a player of 20 years old who hadn't played for three weeks in a position he had never played next to Meli in the Grand Final? Our former coach, obviously.

We are a different team and we don't have the likes of Sculthorpe and Longy in his pomp anymore but then no-one else does either. That doesn't mean to say we don't have talented players at Saints or that we are on the slide. The Board had to start revitalising the team as it was growing older. Next season we will have one of if not the youngest squad in Superleague. You and Wigan and Leeds will all have to bite the same bullet at some point.

What is the big deal with players over 30 being a problem? Look at Menzies he joined Bradford at the age of 35 and has played 57 times in 2 years. Do you think that is down to luck?

He is a freak, most players bodies are shot by their mid 30's