British sports fans who take great delight in mocking the fact that baseball's World Series is contested solely by teams based in the USA and Toronto clearly aren't up on their rugby league. After all, the Super League is classified as a European competition despite 14 of the 16 participants being English, with just one Welsh and one French side adding a bit of continental flavour. As ever, two clubs from the north of England are meeting in this year's Grand Final.
The Warriors have the weaker Grand Final record
Since the introduction of the Grand Final in 1998, St Helens have reached the season finale more times than any other club - this is their eighth appearance in 13 years- and have been crowned champions on four occasions previously, a tally only matched by Leeds Rhinos. The fact that they've been beaten at this stage in each of the last three campaigns counts against them in the eyes of many punters, yet their record of four wins from seven finals is still far more impressive than that of their opponents. Since taking the inaugural title in 1998, Wigan have been back three times, losing them all, including one against St Helens a decade ago.
Regular season advantage doesn't really existIn addition to St Helens' poor recent Grand Final displays, another factor in establishing Wigan Warriors as 1.77 favourites is that they were league winners in the regular season, collecting four points more than the Merseysiders. But the lesson learned over the last few years has been that the team who impress the most in the early stages of the campaign often don't have enough left to offer when it matters most. Three of the last five Grand Finals were won by the side that finished lower in the regular season, a trend which obviously favours second-placed St Helens.
Awards don't always lead to silverwareThe Warriors have been given a whole heap of awards this week, with winger Pat Richards named Man of Steel, stand-off Sam Tomkins again being announced young player of the year, Michael McGuire earning the coach of the year honour and the team as a whole earning the title club of the year. Even if you ignore the possibility of complacency creeping in now that they've effectively been told they've been untouchable in 2010, a negative trend exists whereby the Man of Steel has played for the Grand Final winners in only one of the last six seasons.
St Helens have all the momentum...Supporting the suggestion that St Helens are conforming to the cliché of "peaking at the right time" is their current form - they head into Saturday's clash at Old Trafford on a run of five successive victories, three achieved by margins of 20 points or more. By contrast, Wigan Warriors have lost two of their last six, with their most significant stutter coming in their first play-off match against Leeds Rhinos, which meant that they had to jump through two further hurdles to make it to the Theatre of Dreams, whereas St Helens were able to secure progress to the Grand Final playing one game fewer.
...and the Merseysiders are hugely dominant head-to-headSt Helens available at 2.26 on betfair, a great bet because they have an incredible record against their Greater Manchester rivals. They've won a staggering 15 of the last 19 encounters between the clubs, losing just three, and their successes in that stretch include the heaviest of the bunch, a whopping 75-0 win in 2005; a 14-10 win in last season's play-offs, and the latest, by 26-24 at Wigan's very own DW Stadium back in June.
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