Yes, he was left to defend all that wing on his own, often with three pie eaters running at him. But I'm sure that's Meli's fault too, because his team-mates don't want to stand within ten yeards of him in defence.

Has any team scored 100 in a Super League game yet?



No Leon? No wins.

I think it will be Ashurst and Wheeler to miss out. Lomax and Eastmond to play 6 and 7. I'd have been more concerned if it had been a forward out injured. If our forwards can get on a roll against the likes of Lima an unknown quantity for the Saints forwards a half-back pairing of Lomax and Eastmond should be able to cope well enough. I am quite happy with wing / centre partnerships of gardner and Shenton and Meli and Foster or even Meli and Wheeler. Let's not have any doomongers already please before we have even kicked off.

To be fair, Wigan is the last team I'd play Meli against at centre.



He can do a job there against most, but his decision making is poor and Wigan swamp the edges with numbers and force you to make decisions. Wire threatened to show him up too before they choked (again).



Wheeler is our left centre for 2011, let's start and finish with him there; he's a cracking player.

What are the chances of Foster playing? He's a great fantasy league pick - if he plays! Plus he's better than Gardner!

Am I right in thinking Gleeson hasn't played in any of the warm up games for Wigan. If so then he is going to be a bit rusty going into the match.

That's correct he hasn't played at all since the GF, and neither has Hansen.

I don't know about Ashurst but Wheeler should play at centre. Meli should try his best to defend against the undoubted onslaught. However, I expect the usual and that would have been the case regardless of Leon. We don't want to screw the whole team for the absence of one player. We had enough of that last season. I'm hoping the only change will be Lomax for Pryce. My concern is what happens if Kyle can't make it through the full match. There is no-one left to cover the halves.

No, despite you predicting it every other week.

No, it's because he is quite clearly crap.



Foster is the better choice as he can also kick goals.



In 16 games Foster has scored 172 points.



He averages 10.75 points per game.



In 139 games Meli has scored 376 points.



He averages 2.7 points per game.



Meli also gives away far too many points in stupid errors and bad defensive choices, this is a fact not an opinion. The stats speak for themselves, it would be much more valuable to play Foster over Meli as he will almost definately score more points and no other part of the team has to be changed to accomodate a specialist kicker. Although im fairly sure Meli will be starting somewhere, its just not the way I would go about it.

Hunting season has started on Meli, then.



Feck me, he's not even touched a ball yet.

He's played in 2 friendlies and already managed to drop a ball within 20m off his own line against Widnes off a bomb. As far as i'm concerned he doesn't need to touch a ball, i've had enough of watching him gift points to the opposition from the past few seasons really. If he has sorted out his problems over the off season (which I doubt) and turns out to be a miraculous player, I vow to eat my socks.