What a mess it looks , the game in England is poor .worse every year , I can't see the light at the end if the tunnel ether ,

As I said in another thread, I'm enjoying the SKY games (Saints apart) this year more than I have for the past few seasons.

I think superleagues spark has gone , I will watch anybody on tv , but getting really bored lately same old

I enjoyed the Cas v Salford game a lot. Michael Shenton was tearing it up, oh how we could do with a strike centre like that. But the game in general was like a classic slapstick movie, no quality at all but very entertaining to watch.

I think personally the lack of quality in Super League is 100% down to the coaches and players. The intensity just isn't there. That is the big difference between SL and the NRL, the intensity over there is just leagues ahead of SL. You occassionally see a big game get up to that level over here, but they are few and far between. The clubs have to see that they are coasting and aim up, for the benefit of the product if nothing else. They have to realise it's about entertaining the fans, otherwise the money will dry up.

I was at the Warrington v Bradford game at the weekend and this was a classic mid season Super League game. Neither team had any line speed and there was no meaning to the tackling. The play the balls were so, so slow and you had players in the attacking line chatting to each other whilst all this was going on.

Is this indicative of a game without a 'first past the post' league?

I know the NRL operates it but we have considerable cultural differences AND they've been operating it for years longer. The fact a team has won from 5th gives teams that 'backup' feeling we'll be alright come the end of the season - I've seen Saints fans post just that.

Apart from the odd SL game when there is nothing else on Sky, I have pretty much stopped watching it and instead watch a number of NRL games on Premier Sports.

The standard of games, the refereeing and the commentary teams are streets ahead of SL and sadly this underlines the state of SL at the moment. If something isnt done soon to pick our game up, I can see it going even further to the dogs

I've been watching the NRL for two seasons now and frankly some games are utter rubbish. Some are decidedly average and some are utterly brilliant. I really don't buy the automatic 'NRL is better than SL' line at all. The NRL is a mixed bag just as the SL is but the worst of SL is worse than the worst of NRL. But IMO the best of SL is to the same standard as the best of NRL, bar a handful of players, most of whom play for Storm, the standard of which we cannot match. At the moment.

I've been watching too and the intensity on weekly basis lifts the NRL far above SL . James Graham has described it as like playing in a Saints v Wigan derby every week.

The slide in entertainment value for me coincided with the relaxing of the rules demanding tacklers get off the tackled player immediately. There's too much latitude allowed for wrestling on the floor, giving defensive lines too much time to regroup. As well as this, refs stopped taking defences back as far.

The result is that defences (especially the better teams') are too much on top. Attacking play as also become far more structured and, in most cases (including Saints) generally one-dimensional. I find games to be too much of an attritional biff-a-thon, with big blokes running at other big blokes. There's a lack of craft, a lack of

As an entertainment spectacle, I think the sport has gone several steps backwards

At Saints, we've suffered more than most, because our best periods of success have been built on the back of off-the-cuff rugby, catching defences cold & disorganised, using two of the greatest hookers of the modern to exploit this. The changes in the rules (or, at least, the interpretation of the rules) happened to coincide with the general decline in the quality of our team. Then we've got the issue of Langtree Park being rather soulless.

Overall, I've lost a huge amount of interest in both the game in general and Saints in particular.

I'm getting depressed

I take it on the chin same as the next man when wer not doing so good but I can't see a way saints can change it in the next few years , I hope there working over time to recruit some good players for the future , the young lads are doing us proud at the min

Who ever finished 1st goes straight to OT.
3rd plays 4th.
Winner plays 2nd.
Winner faces 1st at OT.

Simples.

Not a bad way of doing it at all.