Their players are the best ever produced in every position and their squad is better than anything ever assembled.

Stains-
Played 6 won 5
Wigan-
Played 6 won 5
And yet stains have the greatest team ever greatest coach and 1-17 the bestest players in the league with Knowles/Walmsley - man of steel/golden boot (which one I dont know)
Westerman has a bigger and better skill set than Knowles will ever have.

One of those nights it seems. Our attitude seemed off, perhaps a touch of complacency who knows. At least it stops the unbeaten tag being shouted about now, I don't know one Saints fan that thought we would go the full season unbeaten. Toulouse scored nearly as many points against us than we have conceded all season.

It does make me laugh though, this "If Saints had a few injuries I wonder how they would go" comment. That's like saying "If Salah didn't score as many goals this season, Liverpool wouldn't be challenging for the title".

Our S & C team is part of the reason we are Champions 3 in a row. Our fitness is the best in the league and a big part of why we do okay with injuries year on year, it's not luck and it's not a coincidence.

I know that Woolf said the club is looking into the travel arrangements for the future as we don't have a great record in France over the years. Getting up at 6am, 2 hours on a cramped plane and a completely different match day routine isn't great for the body clock and I've never agreed with us travelling in and out on the same day. Our unbeaten record went against Catalans in France last season too. Will be interesting to see if we change the routine in June when we go back to Toulouse.

Hopefully we respond now in the best way. It's great for the game that Toulouse get their first win against the Champions.

The travel arrangements are a tricky one to handle. Wigan's 10 day stint clearly didn't work and in/out in the same day didn't work for Sts.

On another note, how do people think the two teams would go if the coaches were swapped around? Would Woolf get more out of the Wigan squad? Would Sts just carry on as they are?

Both statements are true though aren't they? Yes they have a "if my auntie had balls she'd be my uncle" vibe about them, but they are true.

You have had little injury worries over the last seasons and have profited. Get the same injury crisis as ourselves, leeds, wire, hull etc and that dominance slips despite your fans belief that you're the greatest side in history. Could you compete week on week missing 7 or 8 players as we had to do last season when everyone took great delight in us getting beat? Seeing as you lose every time you play a weak side the answer is clearly no.

Saints fans hate the comments that they’ve had luck with injuries or questions of how they’d get on with 7 or 8 injuries at once but people are going to ask those questions because they’ve never had to deal with it this last few seasons, whilst pretty much every other club has had to.

I’ve given them huge credit for what clearly must be a high quality conditioning/physio department but to say luck doesn’t come in to it clearly isn’t true. Somebody goes in to a tackle and breaks an arm, gets their leg caught in a tackle and twists an ankle, gets hit high and breaks a jaw, keeps picking up head knocks and sits out with repeated concussions and on and on and on. To say luck doesn’t come in to it simply cannot be true. Yes they may be doing well at not picking up muscle injuries from poor conditioning or fatigue (Woolf does his bit on that score by thinking up ways of players getting rests, no exiles players, England pull outs, post cup final rest etc) but that’s just one part of the puzzle.

I'll tell you one thing- we get very little credit for what we have done these past few years. Morgan Knowles alluded to it on the OOYL podcast where he said it frustrates him. In a salary capped sport, to win it 3 times in a row is an unbelievable effort (not to mention we also won the CC last year)

I guarantee that Wigan fans weren't saying it was a poor comp when Leeds won it 3 in a row from 07-09, suddenly Saints are the dominant team and the league is a poor standard.

What about when Wigan dominated all those years? They were the only full time team then so hardly a fair competition. Now that the playing field is level, they haven't dominated in the same way.

Saints win the Final last year and it's "they only just beat Catalan" sorry but are Grand Finals not meant to be closely fought? We won the LLS by a record margin in 2019- comments of "it's a poor league".

Our consistency over the past few years has been up there with any other. The amount of times we have won the LLS is testament to that.

My final point on injuries too, the way Wigan fans talk we get literally zero. Yes we may not get 7 at a time but we have had injuries. Lees has had two relatively long term ones, Knowles missed quite a few last year, Fages was gone for the season after the CC and we lost Bentley from August for the season. Percival has also missed a lot of games the past 3 seasons.

We played a full season without Walmsley in 2018 and were 80 mins away from the GF when only poor tactics from Holbrook saw us lose to Warrington.

We really don't get the credit we deserve. I don't know any Saints fan personally that says we are the greatest team in History but if we look at the SL era from 96, you'd have to say that this current team are up there as only Leeds have done what we have done in the 26 years since SL.

The salary cap makes it a relatively level playing field so any dominant team deserves full credit for that.

I don’t get the whole ‘we don’t get enough credit’ line from Saints (well I do but I don’t believe the players/coaches actually believe it deep down). I think it’s a mantra the inner circle at Saints are throwing out to keep themselves motivated but it’s absolute rubbish IMO. The main coverage of Rugby League is via Sky and my word, they absolutely love Saints and lord the club and most of it’s players to the hilt. You would think Welsby was the second coming of God, Grace the finest winger to have pulled on a pair of boots and Walmsley was made of titanium and so on and on.

Saints have always been a popular club across the game as a whole, certainly a far more appealing winner of a comp to the game in general than Wigan or Leeds and I’m not sure what it is the club wants? I get the players using this line as motivation and also that the fans will just go with that but you surely see why they’re saying it. There’s nothing more dangerous than a quality side thinking they’re badly thought of but nothing could be further from the truth.

Stu, you do realise that the Saints conditioning staff aren't privy to information or techniques that the rest of the league isn't, don't you? Of course there's luck involved!

Certain players are less injury prone than others and you could argue that you've been lucky on that score. You could argue that as a club it's a consideration when you sign players that their injury records are good. You could argue that you're conditioning staff apply their knowledge wisely. All would contribute to having a better than average injury record.

What you can't argue, however, is that an awful lot of luck doesn't come into it too. Unless, of course, having Walmsley missing at the moment through injury is due to a failure of the conditioning staff?

It is a poor league compared to those seasons you mention, you only have to watch it to see that. You may disagree, but IMO the 2006 Saints side would demolish this one.

Wigan weren't the only full-time team, and had won multiple league and cups in a row before we went full time but good try though.

On your second point, you're completely ignoring that it's been an uneven comp during 2 of the years you've won it. We credit Saints for being the best over this period but you can't expect to be lauded in the same way as if you'd done it over normal seasons. Moreso, when Woolf is more than happy to use the situation to his advantage. And please don't pretend that didn't happen.

Of course you've won it 3 times. That's in the record books and credit to Saints for that. But similarly it needs to be recognised by yourselves that it was done across a skewed competition. One where you didn't even need to play the same number of games as some of your opposition.

I'm not talking about Sky, I'm talking about fans of other clubs.

Players are bigger, faster and stronger than ever before and defences are harder to break down yet all of a sudden it's a poor comp. Suddenly when Saints are winning- its a poor comp. Funny that.

We've had luck in finals- so what, it won't say that in the history books will it. What about when Wellens got injured during the 2011 GF and Shenton had to go FB. We were beating Leeds up to that point and they scored to win it down the side where Shenton had been defending, was that not bad luck for Saints?

As I say it riles me that we don't get the credit we deserve. Now we are only a one man team with Walmsley, however if I'm honest I think losing Lomax would have a much bigger impact than losing Walmsely. We didn't lose to Toulouse because Walmsley was missing.

Just for clarity Stu, are you saying you would have still lost that game with Walmsley in the team?

Ok then. I'm a Utd fan for my sins. So by the same context do we say that Liverpool winning the league in 2020 for the first time in 30 years should be under valued too? Whether it's a skewed competition or not, the fact remains you have to finish high enough to qualify for the play offs, then win your play off games and a Final. There's no change there.

Yes. We were completely off, got hammered for pens (through our own ill discipline) and Hurrell/Simm in defence were awful. Roby only came on after 60 mins too, lots of variables. I don't think that Walmsley playing automatically says we win that game. Let's not forget also that he only plays approx 40 mins every game.