Was the 2006 side even the best Saints side in the SL era...?

If I actually thought you were serious, I'd get you sectioned!!!!

Be a tough call - 99/00 was very good, as was 2002 and 2004 could have been until Longy and Gleeson bet against us and got banned. Think you would have to say 06 was the best we have had though

As a neutral in this debate I don't disagree with 90% of your man by man comparisons, but what you haven't touched on is how they actually performed as team.

As a unit the 06 saints team were above the current warrington team. They lost only 3 games all season by no more than 4 points. They were relentless in defence, had forward steel and redfined the way teams attack in super league. Now many teams (including wigan and warrington) attack the same pattern as the saints 06 team, very much like in the nrl at the time.

So no, the current warrington team isn't a match for the 06 saints team and it's probably not suprising that after such highs, saints have seen a decline over the last half decade.

The 2006 Saints is the finest this country has produced during the professional era. This year's Wire team isn't even as good as last year's Wire team.

Blimey 2006 was a great year to be a Saints fan eh! Just brings back a lot of happy memories.

Some of the highlights from those comparisons include:

1. Cunningham but only just. KC played more games and helped the side much more than Monaghan ever could
2. Morley over the unstoppable Cayless. 06 was JC's best year.
3. Briers over Pryce, i mean really? Could Briers have done what Pryce did to Hull in the GF? Not a chance
4. Higham over Roby.
5. Waterhouse over Gilmour. A man who has had 4/5 good weeks against a seasons worth of hard work from Gilly
6. Old man Hodgson over 2006 MOS Paul Wellens

Theres more but i have more entertaining things to do!
Cheers for a much needed laugh in my day!

Bulls 2003 weren't too shabby either. Oh, how I yearn for a Bradford side like that again.



However, as a Grand Final side goes, St Helens 2006 is the best of the three (possible) options.

1 Hodgson Vs Wellens = Wellens
2 Riley Vs Gardner = Gardner
3 Ratchford Vs Lyons = Lyon
4 Atkins Vs Talau = Talau
5 Monas J Vs Meli = Joel
6 Briers Vs Pryce = Pryce
7 Myler Vs Long = Long
8 Moz Vs Cayless = Cayless
9 Monas M Vs Cunningham = Cunningham
10 Carvell Vs Anderson P = Paul Anderson
11 Westwood Vs Wilkin = Westwood
12 Waterhouse Vs Gilmour = Gilmour
13 Ben Harrison Vs Scully = Sculthorpe

14 Mickey Higham Vs Roby = Roby
15 Woody Vs Graham = Graham
16 Hill Vs Fa'asavalu = Hill
17 Grix Vs Hooper = Hooper

Coachicon_biggrin.gifaniel Anderson.

i have to say as a wire fan that that 06 side was top draw and better than our current wire side,
especially as we haven't won the gf yet (but hopefully). I think if we win on saturday then i think the
wire side should come away with a lot of credit and be recognized as one of the top forces over
the past 4, especially past 2 years.

Wellens in his pomp, Lyon (terrific centre), and probably the
best half back combination of long and pryce in the sl era, plus kc and graham with sculthorpe
are legendary now as rightful household names in the rl world and i would be laying some bricks
if that side were to be facing us on saturday.

I also think that our big name players deserve a lot of credit and respect. Games and ultimately
honours can go down to decisions made in a milliseconds and there are such fine lines to be
drawn between the top sides throughout the competition throughout history. Wire went
out last year after conceding a last minute penalty to Leeds/Sinfield and lost by one point
in the last minute. I have to say that I thought Wire were by far the best side last year beating
all the top sides home and away and on any other 'normal' day should have gone through and
at this point on the edge of 2 Gfs

That's sport. In fact it surprises me that Saints in those years of world class players didn't
do the double double, or even 3 consecutive doubles. In 20 years time, no doubt we will remember that
particular side, but it won't stick in the memory statwise many years down the line when we
look at number of Leeds GF finals won in such a concentrated period like the pies' record
of cc finals won late 80s early 90s.

Great sides only seem to be truly recognized in the years after their achievements, like music
and everything else that doesn't seem to sit right at the time, and then a few years later,
you sit back and think, "bloody hell, 80's music wasn't as bad ( when I listened
to it in the 90s". We're even signing some of that stuff on the terraces now like that depech
mode thing.

I know Wire fans will never forget this side, notably Hodgson, Atkins, Briers, Morley, Monaghan,
Westwood amongst many others, and I hope in 6 years plus time that they'll be remembered and respected
in the same breath as those great Saints players I've mentioned above.

I've had a few beers and must hit the sack. I still have a red left eye from the hangover on saturday
which looks like I have a constant hangover in work.

Good luck for next season (apart from Wire games!). You'll
be right up there as you always are next season.

Just a point how did that Saints side stay under the salary cap with all those greats?

We all know how dodgy the current Warrington side is in terms of the salary cap but that Saints side is a cut above in terms of quality, there's no way those guys could have been under the cap.

Wonder if by rights Saints should have that double stripped off them...?

No doubt offshore accounts, suspiciously highly paid "clerical" jobs for women who just happened to be players' wives and miscellaneous other legal loopholes were involved, similar to the ones your current squad is undoubtedly exploiting. I hope our revenue streams at the new gaff come online soon to allow us to be in a position financially to be able to do the same again.

Hopefully this scam will be exposed and the perpetrators have their titles stripped off them, although I am sure Wigan will fight vigorously for both Saints and Wire as they have always been opposed to the communist cap.

I cant believe this is even up for discussion. There is no comparison. The saints team of 2006 would have beat this current wolfs team without getting out of second gear.

Image rights probably. They weren't closed up at the time.

Although the Saints team of 2006 was class, the Millward era was the best side ive ever seen with Long, Martyn, Cunningham and Sculthorpe (the period when Sculthorpe was out of this world). They really were 'the entertainers' and it will be a long time before we see a team like that again. The 2000 grand final in particular both wigan and saints had teams that would smash this current wire team

Paul Wellens
Steve Hall
Kevin Iro
Sean Hoppe
Anthony Sullivan
Tommy Martyn
Sean Long
Apollo Perelini
Keiron Cunningham
Julian O'Neill
Tim Jonkers
Chris Joynt
Paul Sculthorpe

Jason Robinson
Brett Dallas
Kris Radlinski
Steve Renouf
Dave Hodgson
Tony smith
Willie Peters
Terry O'Connor
Terry Newton
Neil Cowie
Mick Cassidy
Denis Betts
Andy Farrell

How people could look at some of the names in those 2 teams and then STILL try and maintain that standards in our game haven't collapsed in the last decade just... beggars... belief... And remember that Bradford and Leeds had similar amounts of quality at that time too...

We had some serious star power in that team. Good job really as we had Steve 'sun tan' Hall on the wing.

Fatbelly, while you are at it, you may as well compare st Helen's football club to the ac Milan side of the early 90s given the gulf in clad is similar

Those teams were class, that Wigan backline was phenomenal, probably the best ever in SL. The only problem with the Wigan team at that time was it did not have that much depth especially in the forwards, the bench was weak. Saints as well were more exciting then than ever, with Tommy M and Sullivan.

However in general standards in SL were not that strong then. Even Bradford were good because they were bigger and stronger than anyone else but their team had guys like Scott Naylor, Nathan McAvoy, Justin Brooker, Hudson Smith in it, they weren't world beaters. Leeds were very heavily dependent on Iestyn Harris.

Harris back then was a top player who dominated SL, he just used to waltz through defences. When he came back in 2004 the game had moved on and he was never able to find the space he used to although he was still quite an effective player.

Below the top 4 the teams were rubbish back then. Warrington finished 6th and we were garbage we just had Allan Langer so we won some games.

I think the time when SL was really at its strongest was about 2004-05.

Bump.

Well, I think we can put this debate to rest cant we?

I don't think it was a serious debate, Fatbelly was just winding you up.

However now that Leeds have won 6 Grand Finals it does bring up another point. In the 9 year period from 2004 to 2012 have Leeds had better players than Saints did in the 9 year period from say 1999 to 2007? Saints won 4 Grand Finals in that time.

I wonder if Saints, despite enjoying lots of success, underachieved a bit in terms of Super League titles given the players they had?

I can think of two possible reasons. One is that Saints had to deal with a strong Bradford as rivals, Leeds didn't have the same strength in their rivals. The other is that for a lot of that time Saints had a coach (Millward) who was not in the highest class.

The first point about Bradford I'm undecided. They were much bigger than everyone else and had the edge physically until the rest of the teams started to catch up, but if you looked through the Bradford teams back then its hard to see where they were stronger than Saints. Their best players seemed to be poor man's version of Saints, eg Lowes/Cunningham; Forshaw/Sculthorpe; Deacon/Long; Withers/Wellens; Naylor/Newlove. They had a great front row but Saints weren't so bad up front with guys like Fairleigh, Britt either.

I reckon Saints had the best personnel in SL for that nine year period so maybe came up one or two titles short. By 2006 Saints had a coach who was in the highest class. I wonder whether had Anderson taken over from Hanley in 2000 rather than Millward, Saints would have monopolised success like Wigan did the late 1980s and early 1990s.

This isn't a sly way of trying to have a dig at Saints saying they underachieved, I'd have loved us to win 4 SLs, just wanted to hear your views of my theory...

Fair point and I've often thought the same actually - in retrospect I think we were a couple of trophies light in that era considering the incredible players we had and we probably would have won more without Millward (although a lot less entertainingly

). I think it's undoubtedly the case that we had a lot more competition then than Leeds have had the last 5 years as well though - dismiss Bradford all you like but they were an awesome team on their day, could chew up regular season games much more easily than we could with their dominating pack and were always tough to beat come the big games - a bit like a supercharged version of Wigan over the last couple of seasons actually.

Possibly Saints were a couple of GF wins light between 1999 and 2007.

1999-2002 , we won 3 GFs in 4 years; but 2003-7 saw us reach "only" 2 more GFs, winning only one.

However, I think there were mitigating factors .......... 2003 the Bulls were the best side in the comp; but in 2004, 2005 and 2007 we suffered due to the fallout of the betting scandal (possibly) and more than our fair share of serious injuries to key players (definitely) .

I know it's all "ifs" and "maybes", but Scully was battling injuries from 2004 onwards, we were injury ravaged in the 2005 play-offs (who can forget Newton's assaults on Lee Gilmour and Sean Long), etc etc .... I definitely think 2005 was one that got away.

Yes I think 2005 Saints were pretty much as good as they were in 2006. It was just due to injuries at the wrong part of the season that they didn't do it.

For all the 'entertaining' reputation Saints had with Millward, there was something missing. Saints had a blase attitude sometimes and no truly great side should cop 50/70 point thrashings like Millward's Saints copped once a season or so. When Anderson came in there was no more of that, he might not have been a big media personality but he knew how to put discipline and order into a team of great talent and he got awesome results. I think it was a shame for Anderson that he didn't get at least one of the 2007 or 2008 GFs but at least you were always winning Challenge Cups with him.

Also Scully's injury record is a factor here - if Scully had been fit all the time then I reckon you could add a couple more trophies to Saints record in that era.