Prediction
Week 1 - (2) Wigan beat (3) Salford, (4) Wire beat (5) Castleford - Cas eliminated
Week 2 - (1) Saints beat (2) Wigan, (4) Wire win at (3) Salford - Salford eliminated
Week 3 - (2) Wigan beat (4) Wire - Wire eliminated
Week 4 - God knows
Not good imo. Its never been much of an advantage imo. If we win in two weeks time we don’t then play for another 2 weeks. We go into the final having played only one game over the previous three weekends. Having said that im not keen on us losing our first attempt to get to the final. After being so strong at home this season a loss at home in the play offs could really hurt the players confidence.
screaming in the family corner, scaring the kiddies
Really? Cas look terrible, 1-7 they’re dreadful and they’ve got no chance of getting to Old Trafford. The standard in SL is bad but I don’t think it’s reached the point where it’s bad enough for a team with the likes of Rankin, Clare, Minikin, Eliis (and so on) to be getting to the Grand Final.
Depends what you do with the time. Not the time for city or beach breaks for the first week.
A good time to practice goalkicking.
Just need to pace both the physical and mental training slightly differently to a 6/7 day turnaround.
It's the time of the season for topping up and working on a specific parts of gameplan
ie wet weather kick chase ,drop goal drills etc.
Impressed with wire coming 4th in a two horse race.
Learned comment from The Don
screaming in the family corner, scaring the kiddies
I think where it can work to our advantage is if we beat say Wigan in week 2 then they have to play again in week 3. Four weeks of intense play off/GF rugby can often be too much for a team at the end of a long season
Salford have shook things up to be fair. Huge ask for Warrington now, winning 4/4 at this time of year is tough.
I expect us to play against Wigan twice.
Interesting game this weekend between Wigan and Salford though. Salford have got a performance in them, not sure they’ve got more than one but I think they’re capable of causing an upset somewhere with Hastings on the field.
Steve Prescott MBE (1973-2013)
V
Im not really arsed to be honest. Maybe im stubborn and unwilling to give the opposition any credit but i honestly think we are the only team that can beat us. If we play to our best we will beat anyone. Folk think im cynical at times. Im not. I reckon this Saints team can achieve anything they want to despite our flaws here and there.
If we get to Old Trafford we may well lose. Theirs equally enough chance that we stick 40 points up the opposition, regardless of who that is.
screaming in the family corner, scaring the kiddies
History tells us it'll be Saints Wigan, under the top five it was 1st Vs 2nd on all 4 occasions, winning it is 50/50
So how about...we lose the first semi against the goons, then give the wire scum a cheeky lesson, then back to the goons at old Trafford, this way everyone is match fit for the final and upto speed, and wire scum get a new arse hole given to them... thoughts?
Not strange at all. Wigan are the enemy, our oldest and most important rival, but there is history there and a mutual respect about what the other club means in the game. We both want to pulverise the other, but neither of us would want the other not to exist and not be there to pulverise!
Warrington on the other hand were always a local irritant, further down the pecking order of glamour games in the 80s-90s than Widnes and Leeds, and even Hull at times. Then they started punching their weight and started provoking rivalries that only existed at a low level. They have succeeded though, because the rivalries they now have with us and Wigan have grown, but unlike the Saints-Wigan rivalry there is no respect at all on any side. Wire don't have the class and the history to back the rivalry up, and for their fans it's all about getting one over on us now because there is nothing historic that they can throw at us, whilst Saints and Wigan fans both look at them as johnny come lately's who aren't really on our level historically.
So, there is something far more annoying about losing a Cup Final to Wire, even though they aren't our biggest and most famous rival. They'd love to be, they'd dearly love to have the history and the gravitas to be, but their stature and size simply don't stand up to the scrutiny. If they had 5-10 years of mediocrity we'd look at them as a local irrelevance. Look at how irrelevant Widnes became to us, and they actually have a history of winning league titles, world club championships etc in the last 30 years. Wire would follow in the same guise, but have a few more loud mouthed fans still trying to provoke us long after we'd moved on.
But, when Wigan were crap a while ago and we were winning everything we still treated them as the enemy. Wigan have earned the hatred we have for them. Wire haven't. Big difference