I was in favour of the salary cap for the first 5-6 years as it did balance out the table and help stop teams from bankrupting themselves , but I have to say I was wrong and it's been a disaster , I was a Leigh fan who grew up and was in wigan schools during the reign , it was a hard time , I was only too happy to see them pegged back , but now i've grown up a lot and lost a lot of interest in RL , I can look back at the 1988-1995 wigan sides and see how good they where , they dragged the standard of UK RL up and other teams had to get to that level , although Wigan did this to other teams detriment and reduced there quality by buying stars and sticking them on the A team ( like Nigel Wright , Tony Smith and Henry Paul early on )

We now have no superstars , no well known names outside of the game , the standard of rugby is nowhere near what it was in the early 90's . Its no longer a sport that will attract many new spectators outside of the grass roots regions , we have young players quitting to follow careers like the police and other sports . Good well run teams have a spending cap so they can invest or take a gamble . The cap needs to go if the sport is ever going to grow and we are still light years behind the NRL.

Don’t get this obsession with having to proclaim teams the best ever. Happens every time a team is successful more than once. How do you even quantify it? Saints have won grand finals against bad teams, in a bad competition. IMO. There’s nothing memorable about the team. They are efficient. Wigan are the most successful team ever. Let’s not get selective about it. But what does that even mean? Not a lot, it’s just a tool by which fans can one up each other. Saints fans can jizz amongst themselves about all this but the reality is they’re champions of a crap competition no one cares about.

And?

No one cares except saints fans.

You obviously care

Great achievement by Saints and look forward to seeing them take part in a WCC match.

I’d imagine that they were relieved to of avoided Wigan in the playoffs though.

Had a feeling this would happen when he first got the injury. Disaster for England if he does withdraw - can't think of an obvious replacement. We'd end up with Marc Sneyd.

Jackson Hastings?

I don't think Wane wants to go down that road but he may be forced to.

Lomax is undoubtedly the best half we have at the moment. Unfortunately, I don’t think it will make any difference whether he plays or not, we are simply not good enough. Waney would have to work a miracle for us to win the World Cup. The competition will show just how competitive SL actually is.

Think he may go welsby/Williams if lomax pulls out.

Looking at the players available to Samoa I think we will do well to top the group. Bookies have it 10/11 the pair for our match with them. I think Samoa could have too much for us.

Which firm has those prices up for the first game? Samoa a great bet at that price, although not as good as about a year ago when they were +12 against England!

Skybet.

NZ minus 34 vs Lebanon Ive gone in on

Waney may do but in my view he simply doesn’t have the quality available to trouble any of the big boys. SL has gone backwards and those shortcomings will be exposed.

I have said before that the 1994/95 Wigan side was the best. To beat all comers, including a great Brisbane team in their own backyard halfway through the NRL season (not a pre-season friendly for the Aussies) puts that team on a different level to any other team in the history of the British game. When another team achieves the same I will gladly talk about them in the same breath, until then no. Saints have proved that they are the best SL team in 2022, but to claim they are anywhere near the best in history is delusional. They have set the benchmark for 2023 and it is up to the rest to catch up. As I have said on another post, the WC will show how really good SL is.