From my perspective, it's more that you have had three good seasons on the injury front whilst every other club suffered and all of a sudden it's an excuse for you but nobody else was allowed to use it.

Look at the teams from GF 2019. We were missing several players (started with our third choice HB) and lost two or three during the game meaning we had a SR on the wing for large parts.

Never mentioned by Saints fans as a reason why you were better than us, you were just better than us. You probably were based on how that season panned out, but if we beat you on Friday then we'll have to listen to how many injuries you have and how players are out of position etc. We spent most of that season playing with a pack containing three rookies who we are now starting to see the best of.

I don't remember the last time Saints were beaten by the better side on the day. Even the cup semi produced lines like "Wigan only played for 5 minutes" "we had injuries" and how lucky we were. Appreciate every club has fans like that including ourselves, but it is very common with Saints fans at the moment (goes back to the arrogance from success thing I mentioned way back) and most of us are sick of reading/listening to it.

Well anyway if rumours are to be believed we'll have Hopoate, Makinson, Percival and Sione all back for the play-offs so there will be no excuses.

Hopoate, Makinson, Hurrell, Sione, Percival, Welsby, Lomax would be a dream to be able to put out in the semi - here's hoping . . . .

Will be very interesting indeed to see how we line up vs Toulouse at the weekend.

No excuses, pah !!! We'll never hear the end of it when they've all hobbled off after 5 mins

I hope you do have a full as much as poss squad.

Didnt Makinson,Percival,Welsby,Lomax,Hurrell play in the last semi you lost,Will Sione and Hopoate make that much difference ?

Hopoate is the biggest potential returnee to be honest - he’s the one that means we have three ball players at 1/6/7 - Ben Davies there has been pretty hopeless (no offence to the lad, he’s not a 6).

Compare Hopoate’s classy contributions at Magic to Ben Davies in the semi and you probably have your answer.

You’re right though - that semi final team looks veritably packed compared to recent weeks! The halves killed us that day - Lomax was struggling to pass and Davies was really poor plus Josh Simm served up a bit of a disaster.

All of which could of course happen again - Simm is an experienced back up player now who we are entitled to have to rely on, he just had a mare. You can’t complain about first reserves having a mare - I think our biggest issue that day was Woolf picked the wrong team and Wigan were their usual lethal selves when the opportunities were there.