Totally agree Andrew with you view of the game. I also have to agree with Northampton Saints. To many of our younger players come into the first team drilled to death but lacking that flair and opportunism like a Tommy Martin or Shaun Edwards. There are of course exceptions Sam T is one that sticks out a mile but I struggle to think of many more. Saints have brought through Lomax and Gaskell from the Academy while promising players they lack that X factor.

The fact that Wigan have signed Mattie Smith (god bless him) is a sign of the times when he was firstly rejected by the saints, and has never really set the world on fire when at Widnes and Salford shows how poor the market place is in rugby league at the moment. For me the better option for Wigan would have been bringing through the young Wigan half back on loan at Widnes. He does look like a real prospect! I am sure saints would be interested him in if Wigan wanted to offload ala Sean Long

Utter nonsense - the Wigan of Farrell, Radlinski, Paul, Connolly etc. would chop the current Pie team (and anyone else currently in SL) into tiny little pieces, never mind the various Saints and Bradford teams there've been post '95. The current Wigan team may be fitter and better drilled than most of the better SL teams from the last 15 years, but would be inferior in every other possible department by a very considerable margin. Stop kidding yourself.

This is you opinion, but please don't present it as fact. There is no way to tell how our current team would go against the Wigan or SL teams of the past. I think we'd be competitive and they would be good games, we may even come out on top, due to the current teams superior fitness.

The game has evolved, players are fitter these days and coached more stringently. When people say it was so much better back then, they are probably right entertainment wise, but now the players are much more professional.

It has happened in all sports, look at football, Spain won the Euros playing no striker, could you imagine the Brazil 1970 side doing that? It doesn't make one better or worse than the other as there is no definitive answer to who would win, I think Spain, my dad thinks Brazil.

Do you really discount better fitness and better organisation so readily? I doubt most modern SL coaches would.

Also, to compare the current Wigan side to other good sides in the SL era and describe them as "inferior in every other possible department by a very considerable margin" is a huge and frankly ridiculous exaggeration.

In the current Wigan team, Sam Tomkins, Josh Charnley, George Carmont, Pat Richards (when fit), Sam Tomkins, Brett Finch, Jeff Lima, Mike McIlorum, Gareth Hock, Harrison Hansen and Sean O'Loughlin would all have comfortably found first-team berths in and around the Wigan, Saints and Bradford teams that you think so highly of.

Purely on the basis that your lot signed Bryn Hargreaves in 2007, I'd argue that Lee Mossop, Gil Dudson and Paul Prescott would also have got into the St Helens team.

Sam is THAT good!

Meant to put Tommy L.

They could be better but as Wigan showed in 2010 fitness is key. That team were almost the same as the team that won nothing under Noble. Organisation and fitness won that league for Wigan.

However, if the team you mentioned were in their prime and playing now with the current fitness and organisation we have at Wigan you're right it would probably beat the current team as well as every other team.

The scary thing is how far your team has fallen since the times when Long and KC were in their prime that team in their prime today would take your current team to the cleaners but that's not where we are fitness and organisation is key now. Wigan have it in spades but the difference Wigan has is it still has a few players that do their own thing and make their own chances. Sam, Mossop, Finch all being that way. And charnley would still get into a squad with all those greats too.

...and, naturally, you're completely missing the point... Noone's arguing fitness and organisation is better now - that has nothing to do with the point...

The point is that basic player quality is in steep decline in SL right now and that[i is [/iincontrovertible fact.

You go kid yourself that Matty Smith is the next Sean Long, Charnley is the reincarnation of Robinson, Carmont would have graced any RL team ever etc. etc. if you like. Personally I'll just live in the real world and get fed up that Saints' current squad, despite being a hollow shell of 5/10 years ago in any vague measure of quality, is still in real terms at about the same level of competitiveness. That simple fact says all that needs saying.

....and yet we're still in the same position in the league with the same chance of winning silverware every season with the same level of competitiveness against the teams there are around us now as then.

Thanks for proving my point for me

So, correct me if i'm wrong, you think Saints are capable, this season, of doing a double or treble as they have done in the recent past?