Big loss in Hastings, by far and away our best player last season. Hopefully Cust goes some way to replace him, don’t hold out much hope for Field, looks lightweight, lacking in confidence but bags of potential and lightning pace.
Hopefully we get a season out of French.
Gildart of old was a loss, but was a shadow of his former self last year, so in reality the loss of him was the season before last.
Looking forward to Bateman being somewhere near his Aussie form.
I think the one to watch is Ethan Havard, has the potential to be a real monster in SL, hopefully Waney brings that out of him.
I do hope the league becomes more competitive, I think Stains have lost a couple and the quality of replacements remains to be seen. They seem to have been relatively lucky with injuries in recent years and although they’ve won 3 in a row, but 2 of the 3 were by the narrowest of margins…..

One man's lucky with injuries is another man's strong squad, sensible approach to blooding of youngsters, highly professional players and conditioning team.

From what I’ve heard very few if any people within the club will miss Hastings.
A talented player but not always a team player.

It’s a combination of all of them IMO. There has to be more than luck to it but nobody can deny Saints have had some very good fortune with injury and illness these past few seasons (apart from the really bad luck of having some Covid cases for that spell just after the cup final).

You make your own luck as they say though. Clearly the conditioning team at Saints are doing a very good job, you only need to look at the shape Konrad Hurrell is in to see that.

Blooding youngsters is easy when you have a fully fit side and there is no pressure on them. Playing them when you're missing 7 or 8 and they need to take the lead isn't as easy.

I've said it before and will say it again.....Saints have played a weak team 3 times in the last 3 years and lost every time. Take 7 or 8 out their side for a long period and the change in results will be as dramatic as ours has been.

just take Walmsley out and they look very beatable...

Like in 2018 when he broke his neck and we finished top of the league and arguably should have won it if not for limit capacity for choking in big games under Holbrook? (Something people often forget in saying Woolf Saints look weaker than Holbrook Saints?)

Walmsley gets the flashy runs no doubt, but as others have said, it has always been built on previous momentum built by Makinson, Grace, Naiqama and Percival, who invariably make good yards and momentum flying into tackles 1 and 2.

Walsmley is very often the cherry on top rather than the whole pie. That’s not to say he isn’t an important player to us, but it doesn’t necessarily change us missing him.

Since I’m here, it’s also a mistake to suggest we were particularly lucky with injuries over the course of 2021. It’s something that’s banded about quite a bit but conveniently overlooks us missing Fages and Bentley to season ending injuries, and us having injuries to almost all of our important players throughout the year at one point or another. Welsby was our top attender last year playing in a multitude of positions to cover various injuries in the backs at any given time. It’s because he has really progressed, along with the likes of Dodd and Batchelor that it feels like we’re full strength so often.

Saints recruitment next year is also made us a bit deeper. Lussick backs up Roby, Bell backs up Knowles which were two pain points for us last year when they were injured. We don’t have Welsby covering the backline any more but Josh Simm is the forgotten man of Saints and Hurrell is a wildcard in cover. We have Norman whose supposed to be the next best thing at prop (at least according to the fans calling for him to get game time over Amor and LMS) and who knows where Sironen comes in since Mata’utia and Batchelor will be our starting back towers. And we have a plethora of experienced kids now (Wingfield, Foster and Davies have SL experience from last year either in our team or on duel ref/ loan with Leigh and Salford).

How is this a Saints thread all of a sudden?

We know they are a great team and still the team to beat

Nah, they're poop, it's just that everyone else is poopier

Speaking of which,what happened about the WCC in the end? Just fizzled out? I fear for the future of the fixture, the Aussies really don't give a damn about any of it.

shock/horror Stains fan (magic superbeetle) instills us with how great they and arguably they should have won the 2018 grand final as arguably Morgan Knowles is the best player in super league apart from Walmsley or is it another Stains player.

I honestly think Wigan will have a great season and will be up there to win a cup or 2.

Sounds like they were well up for it but our friends from over the hill bottled it.

Definitely - Penrith and their leaders are the epitome of open mindedness on international RL competition . . . . . .

As a Hull fan I have both dread and optimism.
Our halfbacks are great, on paper , but as we all know they have both appalling injury records, and age does nothing to assist that , at their stages in their career's. If they stay fit, with the addition of Evans, we should do better than last year. A big blow is Scott Taylor's recent foot injury, which is a 12 week rehab apparently. He has played injured and unfit as a result, for 2 seasons and many fans felt it was time for him to go, but he has trimmed down to a match style physique and would be a great rotation prop, if fit. So we have injuries already but our new Fijian hooker will be a revelation, if training and the odd You tube clip is anything to go by. Satae and Sao are as good as most props in SL, Jake Connor is a real talent, but can he shine when the inevitable injuries bite our 6 and 7?
Could be our year, but my gut feeling is that Leeds, Saints and Cats will be top dogs, with Wire, Wigan, HKR and Hull fighting for 4th.
Just hope Covid doesn't disrupt things too badly and all players, officials and us fans stay safe and healthy.

A lot depends on whether French comes back and is fit and if Field turns out to be a good player. Otherwise we are in the same boat as last season with all our attack going through one player, Cust instead of Hastings. TL is past it and Powell isn't good enough on attack which is why French and/or Field are important. The coaching team can play a part here and if it's obvious there are issues with these two I'd expect them to act rather than make them automatic selections. Same goes across the park really. I am hoping to see some assertive coaching dealing with any issues rather than trying the same thing over and over if it's not working. If the coaches do that we are already in a better position than last season.

I don't think Cust will try to be drummer, lead violinist, trumpeter and conductor. Hopefully that will allow other players to do their jobs particularly not having any of the kickers caught on the 4th tackle.

I don’t think our problems were solely focused around Hastings trying to do everything tbh. I think it played a part for sure but when you’re playing a junior pack against grown men each week you’re in trouble. We were totally unorganised in attack, we had nobody willing (or being instructed) to do any running off the ball, so dummy runners and support play became redundant. The players generally looked totally at a loss regards what Lam wanted from them.

There’s plenty to work on but I’m confident a lot of quick fixes will have been implemented in the off season and even if we started with Hanley at fullback, Cust and Tommy in the halves and Powell at 9, I still think we’ll see a real upturn on anything we saw last season.

From a solely attacking POV, I don’t think I’ve seen a team have a worse season pound for pound than ours last season. Even teams who have gone through seasons winning hardly any games have averaged more points per game than we did.

Things can only get better.

For me the return of French is massive, if he can come back and be close to his form of 2 seasons ago we’ve got a chance to compete, imo our starting 13 still looks a hell of a lot weaker than both Saints and Catalans and also weaker than Warrington and Leeds, what we do have is the strongest depth though. I’ll be fairly happy if we make the top 4 and play some attractive rugby.

I think Wire look weak in the forwards which will cost them the chance of being a genune threat for trophies. I reckon Wigan have a decent chance of finishing above them.

I think the the likelihood is we will be scrapping it out for a top 5 spot.

That on paper maybe doesn't look like an acceptable return however I think we are in transition this year and the improvement should be judged by on field performance not just league position.

Saints, Catalans, Wire, and Leeds I think will all be scrapping it out with us and I expect a much lower spread of points between 1st and 5th spots than in other years.

I hope so - its been a while since a few teams have been competing for top spot.

Re French I think we have to view him as a potential wildcard that could strengthen us mid season - obviously we can't be certain if he will come back at all but if he does (in a month to 6 weeks for example) then he should have his own mini pre-season upon arrival. We can't rush him back like last time - that would be neither ethical or logical. A fully ready Bevan French in June will help us far more than a half ready French in March or April.

Absolutely correct and it’s where I’m hoping Field can really step in and show us what he can do. If he gets a run at fullback for us and really lights the place up, we’ll be in such a fantastic position. The club won’t feel pressed in to any rushing back of French (I mean rushing him from the point of being back over here, I’m sure they won’t rush his arrival in the first instance) and as and when he is back you could have massive competition and two players with sheer pace that could play together.

There can be no repeat of last seasons mistakes. We rushed Field back in because French wasn’t here and he wasn’t ready after a back problem in pre season and then we rushed French back because of that Field injury and the result was season ending injuries for both.

Unlike Lam, I expect Peet will trust the likes of Hanley/Halsall to do a job in their correct positions rather than rush players back.

I’m hoping to be pleasantly surprised.
Looking forward to being on the front foot more with more tries and conversions together with better field kicking.

I’ve been impressed with how Matty goes on about culture, environment and performance, just hope this translates on the pitch resulting in better entertainment and improved performance.

Finally I really hope the concourse beer improves, last season offer was totally rank, with no cask or decent lager on. The small bar under the west was a revelation once, but last year it was the same dross as the other bars.

To get my season tickets before the season actually starts

Excellent point, the click is ticking, anyone idea when the ST’s will be received?