There is obviously going to be some down playing of that Saints result by Wigan fans, as there would be on the flip side. It was an incredible achievement and something that the English game in general can be proud of and it will go down in Saints history.
Now for the honest part that Saints fans might not like-I don’t think anybody can deny Penrith took that game pretty easy (at least to start with). They didn’t risk players with knocks, it was lumped in as part of a programme of pre season friendlies and there seems a huge apathy with the fan base (they got their lowest crowd in many years) but even with all that, they should comfortably be beating any English club in their own country. They can spend 4 times as much as our clubs for starters, so it was still a ridiculous result for Saints.
Move forward to our game with them and I’d imagine Saints will have woken them up a bit and we’ll see a more focused Penrith rock up in Wigan. If they’re fully on, we won’t beat them and I’ve no issue admitting that. If we do beat them, I find we’ll need them to again be a bit arrogant about the fixture and should that come to fruition, it won’t take away from Wigans achievement because just like I noted above, a team spending 4 times what we can should be able to get over some arrogance/complacency, a lack of warm up fixtures and in this case travel.
People can think Saints beat a complacent Penrith ‘and’ think it was a great achievement, they don’t need to be mutually exclusive.
