Just been pointed out Faz prob make their subs bench.
Such a great team that Saints are we are very very lucky they didnt get to the final as we all know what would have- Same winners !.

We just have to accept that, as a club, Wigan are inferior to St Helens in every way imaginable

Once we get to that point, we will all be much happier

And that little shiny thing at its side.

I saw that. Completely missing the point that we had Cooper, Byrne and effectively Havard missing or that our "powderpuff pack" has been destroying teams for the last 2 months or so, including the Catalans pack on their own pitch! Also completely ignored the fact that we played an interchange down so the props had to play long minutes.

To be fair, Saints without Walmsley, Paasi and Lees would be stronger though, what with LMS taking up the slack and having back rowers Knowles and Mata'utia as ready made super props!

Credit to sky for that, Ive watched it about 18 times.

The other factor in Dodd’s downturn in form is that Lomax has been a shadow of his former self.

Interestingly, the crowd for the GF was only 2,500 less than Saints v Leeds got the year before and a massive 13,000 more than the Saints v Catalans generated in 2021. Well done the guys and gals from Wigan, still the biggest draw in RL.

Lomax and Dodds downturns may also because the Saints pack have lost the big advantage they had.
Roby was coming to an end Walmsley didn't look as dominant last season and this one seemed even more past his peak at his best he was worth two forwards or more, LMS also couldn't feed off his dominance, Pasi injured back end who was looking their best forward and even the yards Perci and Tommy make don't look so damaging now. Obviously they put a lot into the start of season but looked like a old boxer on the ropes who's had a few to many fights, although still hanging in with the chance of landing a good punch. Maybe a good long off season will see them refreshed but it does feel like it's the end of an era maybe.

Bit weird to be trying to use the 2021 final as a feather in your cap when travel restrictions meant Catalan couldn’t bring as much as they could have and many people were still very wary about leaving their homes and going to mass gatherings etc. you also had 58k more than the 2020 final, impressive!

58k is a decent enough crowd tbf. Could have been worse. I would however expect a fairly decent following when it’s your first final in 5 years and your fans are by and large confident of a win. I do think last year’s crowd was pretty poor too, tho I don’t think it held much intrigue as a contest and fair weather saints fans were probably a bit blase about it by then and I doubt many neutrals would have wanted go for what was always very likely to be yet another saints victory.

Would have been interested to see what the crowd would have been for a Wigan v Saints final this year though. Really think the rivalry, positivity around Wigan, nervousness about the result from both sides, neutral intrigue etc could have led to the biggest crowd for a long time. Ah well. Maybe next year!

Fwiw even as a Saints fan I’m fairly happy you won. Not personally perse, but I’m fairly happy that the negative tactics of us and Catalan came unstuck this year and the title went to a team playing good rugby all season. Could really do with the game moving on from some of the turgid displays put on in big games the last few years