Why try and belittle our achievements then? It's an odd comment to make.

French is playing. I'm sure the 'French injured' rumour gets a run out every derby game now.

If Field and French are missing it’ll have to be a workman like performance, similar to Wire (a) and Saints on GF last year ( I know French played them games).

Tight game, Smith will need to kick well and hopefully manufacture some points, giving Wardle plenty of ball would be the way to go imo.

It's definitely something I think, probably as a coping mechanism

EDIT: I misread your final paragraph - I thought you had said it WOULD be the best single season ever. To answer your question - quite possibly yes. And I would never try and play that down by saying it's because Saints were crap.Hence why I find it so ridiculous when Wigan fans try to play down what we did 2019-2022.

French is on the Official Clubs Twitter game day post and they have also posted a clip of him in action on another post. You’d guess he would be playing based off that with a little troll at the rumour, or maybe it’s just a bluff?

Honestly, when i watched the game back on tele i thought French chose to go down as he didn't want to potentially run the full length when the game was effectively over. He looked like he was grinning at the Leigh defender as he did it.

I imagine using Bevan's picture in the game day graphic is also, as you say, the club's way of dispelling the rumour without outright addressing it.

He may well have an injury but I thought he went down because he was knackered. The thing about French is he's that talented he can get away with it but I certainly don't think he's in optimum physical condition. There's a little bit of bad weight there and it doesn't surprise me that covering much more ground playing fullback has led to a little injury. Don't get me wrong - he's incredible, our best player and the league's best player but I do think his conditioning could be a touch better.

Club doesn't want to adversely affect the last minute walk up crowd by saying he's out

Seen this mentioned a few times regarding his condition and personally I don’t buy into it, especially this deep into the season.

If you look at the majority of the indigenous players their natural body types are slightly different to what we would consider a traditional Western European athlete.

If you look at the likes of Latrell Mitchell and going further back Inglis, Idriss, Matty Bowen and many others incuding Nathan Blacklock, who I believe is a relative of French, they did not have a traditional athletic figure.

I agree he’s maybe doesn’t have a 6 pack etc but I don’t think that if he did he would be in any better or worse condition to play rugby league.

In regards the move to fullback positional shift he may not be acclimatised to the extra yardage he will have to cover which may be testing his aerobic system more than he is used to playing in the line with him taking more carries and positioning himself in different areas of the field rather than in one channel in defence.

Really hope he plays tonight and it is just rumours created by a troll. Form goes out of the window in these games and we need our stars on the pitch for occasions like this.

Absolutely no way Saints play anywhere near bad as they did against Cas regardless of how many they may be missing.

Nerves are kicking in now.

I woke up Monday morning dreadng it I'll be honest. We were THAT bad v Cas.

But a mixture of you being without O'Neill and potentially French plus the reports Wellens is shaking our attack up a bit has got me excited again.

I still think Wigan are rightly favourites to win the game but it's not as clear cut as I had it earlier in the week.

Agreed, plus last couple of hours has put a bit of drizzle down which may make the pitch (and ball) a little greasy, always a narrower.