Wigan v Saints 12pm at Robin Park tomorrow, it should be another good game.

I’ll be surprised if Saints win this one. This Wigan team is outstanding although they are missing one of their props.

What do I know. Saints must have a decent team too. 46-18 win. Wigan didn’t score a point in the second half. Will be interested in Rogues take on it.

That was pretty brutal, the scoreline maybe flattered Wigan a touch. Saints so much bigger and powerful but backed up with intensity and execution. Their starting front rowers are huge and I was impressed by their number 5 on the wing, really athletic and had a bit of a chip on his shoulder/aura about him.

I think that is an excellent summary.

The Wigan side has one or two players who might cut through in a few years but Saints and Warrington have most of the pick of that younger age group.

That’s the first game I have watched this season but in the 5 or so years I have watched the Academy I have never seen Wigan get dominated like that. You could point to the size difference and say the Wigan lads have more growing/filling out go do so maybe more improvement but it was far from just size that made the difference, Wigans heads seemed to drop in the second half and it seemed some gave up almost, Saints to their credit kept the foot on the pedal and it was a bit like men against boys.

wigan got the best player at age group thats just come through

That was my point, needs more than one player.

Who’s that then?

Nobody stood out for Wigan today, the pack got dominated by the Saints front rowers almost bullied.

I’ve heard big things of Nathan Lowe but he was playing with his head up his backside today, doing his own thing.

Jack Farrmond showed some good touches but that’s about it.

I’ve not seen a Wigan junior team as flaky in defence as that before. They didn’t look like they wanted to try and mix it with the Saints forwards at all. After years of dominance at that level, we currently look to be hitting a bit of a lull. I’m not close enough to it to know why that is. Are we getting outbid for the best juniors? One thing is for sure, if you want to base the club around producing your own players, you can’t afford to not be getting the cream of the crop from the local area.

In saying all that, results aren’t hugely important at that level, if you can bring through a couple of top quality young players every so often, rather than rafts of decent ones, you’re probably better off. Saints haven’t won anything like the amount of titles we have at academy level but in the past 6-8 years, they’ve produced more internationals than we have.

Hasn’t there been a shuffle of the pack when it comes to the youth development positions at the club? I think they’ll have identified there’s going to be a problem in the supply line.

To be fair to Wigan I think 15 out of their 17 were first years whereas Saints were mainly 2nd years. Makes a big difference at that age.

Jack, watched that age group for years and he was the stand out growing up against everyone

It does but, there are certain things you expect from a Wigan side and I think we came up short in two areas - defence and teamwork. There were some good players on show but, as usual, it will be interesting to see who goes on to make the grade.