On a cheery, if slightly pointless note ahead of our visit to a new ground on Monday, I thought I’d dig out Wire’s results from their first games at new stadia in the Super League era. I’d always remembered these games going badly, but when you see it written down, it makes for pretty grim reading:

Huddersfield 28-6 Wire 31/05/1998 McAlpine Stadium
Wigan 26-4 Wire 16/07/2000 JJB Stadium
Widnes 24-18 Wire 14/07/2002 AutoQuest Stadium
Hull 38-14 Wire 20/07/2003 KC Stadium
London 30-28 Wire 10/06/2006 The Stoop
Catalans 27-16 Wire 21/04/2007 Stade Gilbert Brutus
Salford 48-24 Wire 29/06/2012 Salford City Stadium

Notes:
These stats are for either our first league games at new-build stadia or our first visit to a permanent home ground of a current SL team.
I know that we won our first ever game in Perpignan at the Aimee Giral, but that was a temporary home and Catalans’ home ground is the Gilbert Brutus.
You can say that Widnes’ ground wasn’t new, as it was built on the same site as Naughton Park, but anyone who ever visited the latter knows that it’s in no way the same place, save for the odour.
London have played everywhere under loads of different names, so I just threw this one in to be pessimistic.
Huddersfield only won 2/23 games all season in 1998, but we were one of them.

And yes, I know this doesn’t actually mean anything, but when combined with our dismal record in the town of St Helens, it’s another reason to dread Monday for me.

I'm dreading it as well, but not because of your meaningless list of unrelated results. We're playing an in form Saints who almost always beat us, and if we lose we could struggle to finish top two.

Massive game this.

I always dread playing Saints, because I hate losing to them more than any other team and no matter how good we get as a team or how well we did against them last year, I still always expect to lose to them and this time is no exception.

To summarise, I think we’ll lose, and as a minor aside, we never tend to do well on our first visit to new grounds.

Now the Wire.

we'll beat saints and lose to Wigan.

i fancy 2nd whatever happends in these 2 games ud expect saints n catalan to lose atleast once and we have 3 winnable games after wigan

I Live just outside St Helen's but go to school in St Helen's and all the glory hunters in the school go on saying how Warrington aren't a threat and how rubbish they are. They think this will be a walk in the park for them. One of them even said to me that Warrington can win a cup but they cant win a league/play-off. I think we will win... What's with all the negativity

How dare he after all those wire grand finals?

One could argue that Saints can't win the playoffs either on recent evidence.

the only thing i *dread* is ending up stood nxt to some of the doom and gloom type of fans as i tend to more of a *positive* type wire fan,so im not dreading mons game or any other upcoming wire games,im looking forward to it,and ,given the strength and depth of our squad ,plus the confidence oozing in the wire team at the min ,im more than confident of a wire win on mon

I can not wait for this game. This derby is better then playing the pies in my opinion. Goodluck !

Didn't do so bad first game at the new Wembley Stadium.

We are in a very healthy (bar the salford game) purple patch. And there are many different reasons why I think we will win... Stating the obvious or not.
Unlike Salford there's no chance Saints will be underestimated.
The players will be up for this as you will see when they are warming up.
They are all aware of what is at stake.
We are just as good as them if not better.

Its not the playoffs we have problems with, its the final that we struggle with. We are in good form though, and practically injury free. COYS!