Last Son of Wigan wrote:
Fair point, what have Saints, as a team or CLUB to achieve this over Wigan? And before you talk about roofing consider all that Wigan has acheived off the field as well as on.
To quote the SL website: "St Helens rounded off the evening’s awards when they were named the 2013 Super League Club of the Year for their investment in developing a world class facility at Langtree Park and their continued success in the area of youth development."
We have obviously got it because we have developed a top class facility which we actually own and can play in whenever we want to, rather than being the rent boys of a football club and play when they let us. Our academy IIRC started the season very well and were blowing most other teams out of the water - sadly, the knock on effect of the injury hit season we had meant that players like Walker, Greenwood, Swift, Richards, Thompson, Hand etc have all found themselves playing first team and the academy performances suffered because of this. That said, credit must go to our youth development for the work they have done with these guys as all came in and performed very well when we needed them to.
Couple this with the fact we have formed a number of successful community partnerships, both in and out of RL, and the links with Rochdale (who have ironically just become champions of their league under guidance of one of Saints coaches) and Whitehaven and I think its well deserved.
