i know i'm biase but bloody hell!
you could paraphrase what you've said into...wigan are poor therefore superleague is poor! we've (the wire) have had a pretty up and down season, won the cup, didn't make the play offs. but briers' drop goal in the QF's along with a few matches where warrington have played to their potential make me view this season differntly than you. i';m not gonna say it..well yes i am.. your arrogant belief that the season is reflected in how well or not wigan play is sad and twenty years out of date.
hull kr, huddersfield and cas have had good seasons and are knocking on the door so to speak, yes i'm as biased as you are but morley and carvell have stood out this season as has tomkins for you to name a few, there are more.. get over yourself and stop moaning!

Some people's level of unhappiness is coming from the season over all, Wigan's performance overall, and some of the other teams overall. There have been a few matches were Wigan have played fantastically (e.g. Leeds at home). How is it possibly twenty years out of date to feel a lack of satisfaction with the SL product on offer? It's actually a really modern attitude to expect more and more, and continuous development and improvement.

It's also compounded by the fact that the NRL this year has shown that continued development and improvement, were they took an already great product, and made it even better (e.g. the two ref system and cleaning up the PTB)

You say our attitude is out of date, yet actually so is yours.

Everything's going well at Warrington, to all must be right in the British RL garden? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that what you're saying?

We said the same when all was going well at our club. We were wrong then, and you are wrong now.

There's a bigger picture which can only really be measured by the financial health of the game, which is dire, by the strength of its weakest links, which is equally dire (so dire in fact that this will eventually prevent the RFL enforcing its SL criteria, because if/when Saints, Salford, Cas, Wakey etc actually fail to deliver their new stadia, can you really see them all being chucked out?), and by its international status, which is monumentally dire - even as far as our RL cousins are concerned we are a complete joke.

Sky may have some better balanced matches to screen, but thus far SL has not strengthened the game sufficiently to ensure its long-term survival as a pro sport.

i agree the NRL continues to improve, but feel superleague isn't getting any worse imho. there have been some amazing games this season, i've witnessed a few and watched a few on sky. there does appear to be a levelling out of teams abilities to beat each other which i feel is a good thing. i also believe these playoffs are going to have a few upsets and unexpected results. the belief that the previous poster was out of date by twenty years was made to emphasise his belief that unless wigan win the product is in some way flawed!
i like the product and intend to continue purchasing! as far as modernity is concerned yes develop, yes improve but don't sulk when your team does poorly expecting the changes to be made for the benifit of the mighty pie withe the deluded belief it's bad for the game when they don't win every thing!

When has SL ever been good as you say, in previous years there have been the games where results are a foregone conclusion and then the games between the so called top 4 which were close. Is this what we should see year in year out or would you prefer that like oz different teams get to the finals every year.

Saints are looking like they are entering a period of transition so may tail of (a bit) next year. Leeds are looking strong for the next few years but aside from them it looks an open comp.

I personally am looking forward to hopefully someone breaking the top 4 monopoly if not htis year then maybe next. This has to be good for the sport. The biggest detriment that RL has seen in living memory was the Wigan domination on the eighties, it all but killed interest in the CC and the week was dull, would anyone want to go back to those years.

Another historical revisionist. Where you actually around and watching in the 80's, as apart from the CC run it was not by any stretch of the imagination domination by Wigan. Go and do some actual research on results in the 15 years prior to the introduction of superleague, because frankly you're being very disrespectful to a number of teams with that attitude.

There are two completely separate points:

a) is the game more competitive now?
b) is the standard of RL on display better or worse?

You're entitled to your view that this year is great. I'm entitled to my view that possibly the most exciting seasons i've seen were 1992-1993 and 1993-1994.

I'm also of the opinion that the saints side of 2006 was a complete joy to watch - i've not seen a single team this season that i've felt even came close to that standard.

Comparing then to now is meaningless. However bad you may think it was, the British game survived that era, and for a brief time around then was actually challenging the Aussies on an even field (we had far more and far better players around then).

But that time's gone and has no relevance to this conversation - except that you can say those Wiganers who were blind to the game's problems then were no more blinkered than those non-Wiganers who are blind to its problems now.

I can name one.

Yours agianst KR in the CC, and that wasn't amazing from a nuetral point of view, it was a good game. Nothing more.

Fact is your a Warrington fan and you've had a good season. Well done. That doesn't mean that Super League is improving.

Have we seen a team that are 'the team to beat' I haven't seen a St Helens setting the world alight, I didn't see leeds that produced skill that make me sit back and think...wow.

The only try that made me jump out of my seat in a pub full of people was Ainscough's over the head pass to Carmont. You are saying "we have had a good season, so Super League is improving, yet you think it isn't because you've had a bad season" Well your point is flawed isn't it.

In my opinion, across the board, across the whole of Super League, this has been a boring season. Last season I watched the vast majority of wigan's games home and away, plues any game on sky that I could get my hands on. Even Sky+'ing the game on a friday and watching it when I got back from the JJB with my dad. We did that all last season. Few beers and settle down to watch the rugby.

We started doing the same this season and soon got bored of it. Maybe that was just a blip this season, and next season will be awesome.

Oh, and Bondi-Warrior, your right the NRL is light years ahead of us.

It has been a poor season due to the fact that a poor tackle (i.e a tackle where a defender is 'carried' by the attacker) can be mitigated by a series of grapples, holds and locks on the floor. At times the game as become like Greco Roman wrestling.

IMO SL has gone too much from tick rugby - where the likes of limited players like Higham were made to look good, to a wrestle fest.

I don't know what you're all whinging about to be honest.

Yes, we would all like Wigan to be better but looking at SL as a whole, I think this has been a great season.

We can go on and on and on about 'standards' but if every team played the perfect game of RL, then every match should end up 0-0, every team will complete their sets, every team will kick 40-20s off every set and no one will get past defences.

In some ways RL is a pale shadow of its former self. There are no characters, hardly any inventive players, nothing off the cuff (save for Thomas Bosc's double kick through to score) and our players are like robots.

But as was said before, Saints's strong start then collapse has been a joy to watch. Who would have predicted that Huddersfield would do so well? Who would have predicted that Hull and Bradford would do so badly? All our teams are capable of beating anyone else on their day, any one of four teams could have nicked 8 on the last weekend, and there's no daylight between 2nd place and 6th.

The competition is very even these days with no matches being deemed a foregone conclusion before a ball has been kicked. Isn't that what we all wanted?

we had our first major success for 35 years, so not making the playoffs implys there is room for improvement at wire. so no, your wrong that was not what i was saying at all. suddenly you bring finances into the debate, me thinks your trying to prove a point i was not even debating. when it comes to changing criteria, pot /kettle/ pie springs to mind! face facts if wigan were winning everthing you would not have posted this thread at all? as for how the aussies view us, that wiull never change regardless of the state of the game...wich will survive for generations to come! despite your moaning

i so agree with what you've said...spot on!