Kyle Eastmond is injured. He played over 10 games last and impressed for the league winners and Challenge cup winners.

saints will be in the top 4 under the benefit of wayne bennetts coaching.



souths stand a good chance at the top 8



but we did franchising 10 years ago, why is it being mentioned now

You're assuming everyone at home and everyone away once (+ magic) but the precedent for not doing that has already been set. Sure, it'd be nice and there's probably and optimum number for an RL league, but IMHO expansion with preservation is a far more important priority.

Is this based on fact or feeling?

As it is, we field as many (if not more) english talent than other SL teams. Our reserve grade were 1 bad ref away from the semi's last year and we now have kids in the England age group squads.

Whilst we don't have the "big name" stars in our side, we do have 3 England Internationals and were the only team outside of the top tier who had someone on the plane to Australia. I'll add, that pudro was one of a handfull of players who came out of the WC with his rep in tact.

What we have lacked for 3 years is consistency, but as for just "occasionally beating leeds", we will give any team a game and I doubt any coach looks forward to playing us.

As for 3 years time, the only worries we have are off the pitch.

If you are going to post drivel, can I suggest that in future, you research the topic before posting.

You are then back to the very obvious 2 divisions of 10, with 1 up 1 down and 27 fixtures plus a weekender.

The stupid thing is there is an odd number in the Championship (11) and only 10 teams in Championship 1. Perhaps on ability that is the right format but really there ought to be a better way to split the 35 clubs especially so the lower teams get more games (more expansion at the bottom maybe the way to go but then again do any of the RL Conference clubs want to take that extra step which will require more finance with perhaps not the reward of perticularly bigger gates).

Feeling.



Can I just add that I don’t watch all the other SL teams obsessively and therefore for some I’ve given a dire prediction. This thread was created for your opinions and other peoples opinions rather than myself causing mild controversy.







I’m a big fan of Purdham no doubt and he is as good as their get in super league. You’ve got a good youth system coming on at Harlequins but it is debatable that it’s (waits for echo’s about Leeds Academy lost to Celtic Crusaders Academy) a good few years behind the likes of Leeds and Wigan. However I don’t think it’s the academy that is your problem!







That’s probably the reason why I think your going to do poor and I’m sure you’ll accept my opinion on that.







A few people have criticised my original post that has created debate. In future I’ll make sure I spend hours and hours putting this together so that we can have a marathon of thumbs up..



But yeah for real I’ll put more effort and research in next time..

the game would expand by plenty of measures, in fact, the only way it wouldnt expand is the number of clubs in SL



what a strange thing to say

Go on then... What are these 'plenty of measures'?

What have you based this on precisely?



It seems you have watched a couple of games on SKY to come to the conclusion for Wigan.



I like Tomkins, I think he will be a real talent, but then it is hard to understand the contradicition in your remarks between Saints and Wigan depth.



I seem to recall Saints winning last years reserve final, and being finalists in the academy final. I think it was pretty much the same the year before.



With the likes of Eastmond, Frodsham, Foster, Wheeler, Dixon and Macgennis already breaking through with bolters such as Armstrong then I think we will be ok thanks very much. This to be complemented by Scott Moore who seems to be progressing well at Huddersfield.



I would stake money that at least 3 of these will go on to gain international honours.

geographical, representative numbers, potential player pool, elite player pathways, these things would be done automatically simply by admitting a club from a new area, regardless of its success,



and you would choose certain areas in hope of expanding audience, sponsorship portfolio, audience within targetted demographics, participation, revenue,



in fact, pretty much everything you would measure it by bar the size of the league

Other way round



We (Wigan) won the reserve final and St Helens beat us the U18's.