Quote: NickyKiss "I think those match ups highlight how a neutral would probably give a different opinion to a Wigan or Saints fan. Ask a Wigan fan about those and I think loads would pick all of ours bar Isa but I think more neutrals would pick Knowles over Ellis, Clark over Leeming, Percival over Keighran etc.
It’s all make believe but if I wrote down a combined team, I think I’d have around 6 to 8 Saints players in it. What I would say is I think Saints have a far bigger drop off in quality terms from their best 10-12 players to the rest of the team than we do. Guys like Bennison, Hurrell, Blake, Mbye etc are pretty poor players. I don’t think we have too many of those (if any).'"
I think that's the point. I still don't think there's much between our starting XIIIs on paper, all things being equal with fitness and form. You can definitely argue that a good number of their players get in our team, and they have every chance of beating us on Good Friday.
But where our depth is outstanding, theirs doesn't look anything like strong enough to manage through the full season without a massive slice of luck on the injury front.
Put another way, yesterday we put 60 past a team away from home in the league missing nine players who are give or take certainties to get into our first seventeen. Yes it was London and I'm not saying that Saints need to be able to have [ithat[/i amount of depth, but I'd say they're only ever three or four injuries away from a really substantial drop off in quality.