This time last year the dust had only just settled in the more stuck-up sections of the press regarding Saints being voted BBC Sports Personality team of the year.

If you recall Saints won more votes than anybody else, but the fact that they had completed a domestic treble was considered insignificant in comparison with the monumental achievements of that European team wearing jumpers, tanktops and Rupert trousers. It appears that hitting a small ball around a big park until it goes into a hole, avoiding all the sandpits, on one summer's afternoon was more worthy of adulation and exaltation than a full gruelling nine months of intense, high pressured action.

Joe Public disagreed and voted for Saints, which to some was the biggest travesty of sporting justice since Joe Bugner took all of Henry Cooper's belts off him.

After that the Beeb must have decided that such a furore would never happen again and they put it up for a panel to decide.

No disrespect to the panellists, whoever they were, but it would be interesting to see what they had to say about the merits of this Saints side that backed up 2006 with a World Club Challenge win over Brisbane, lifted the first Challenge Cup at the new Wembley, finished top of the Super League pile for the third year running and just fell short of an unprecedented back-to-back treble.

The winner, emerging from the deliberations of the great and good, was the England Rugby Union team. Now I have no axe to grind with the sport of rugby union, but that decision was an absolute joke.

Over the course of the year they finished a poor third in the Six Nations and when they got to the World Cup were blitzed by the Springboks in the group stages. For the rest of the tournament they opted to play a brand of stick it up your jumper rugby that could send a glass eye to sleep.

It says a lot about the laws of rugby union that such an approach could actually achieve positive results, with England able to knock out more talented footballing teams en route to the final. But it won them few friends, save for in the coffee industry and other stimulant manufacturers.

And what have they done since winning the award - lost to Wales and scraped home against the Italians. And to put the icing on the cake they can't even use the much maligned Andy Farrell as the scapegoat this time around.

So the point of this rant? Perhaps it is just a little tit-for-tat because it is so frustrating that rugby league fans have to be so overtly vocal to get their views heard when it comes to newspaper column inches, television coverage or even daft things like awards.

Can anybody really explain why league men have to be so much extra special to get a gong from the Queen, when they are proffered to those in other codes of football like confetti?

The BBC has gone back to 1981 for their new cop drama Ashes to Ashes. Thankfully we don't have to follow them to a year that had nothing to redeem it bar a few good tunes from The Specials.

Whole swathes of St Helens town centre, the spot where the Asda is now, were waste ground; Unemployment was about to pass the three million mark; Blokes were wearing white socks and women had awful hairstyles and to cap it all Saints were in the doldrums.

The team, for those who want to be reminded if simply to count their present day blessings, struggled to finish eighth although our season was brought to life with a Challenge Cup run to the semi-final, where we lost to Hull KR.

Two days after that cup knockout we played and defeated a Warrington side in game pursuit of the title. Wire ended up finishing second, two points behind Bradford Northern, but if they had been dealt a decent hand they would have won it.

Billy Benyon's men were forced to play their last NINE games in 23 days due to a backlog caused by their cup runs in the Lancashire Cup, John Player and Challenge Cup. These fellas had to go to work in between as well! I rarely feel sorry for Warrington, but that really was a travesty of sporting justice.