No. We went in at half time 14-10

I don't but don't get too carried away. Noble has a stated predilection for veteran players. His hand has been forced somewhat because of your start to the season but he won't take much persuading to drop the kids back to reserve grade or even ship them out.

Tomkins looks very, very assured. Looking forward to seeing him Friday.

OK I hope you continue to make use of your academy and not ship them off and replace them with aussies as you have done in the past.

There is alot to be said about developing as a team together over the years and I just wonder how much better off you would be if you had't of let so many of your good academy products go?

Yes our reserves arn't doing too well at the moment but that is because our academy players are busy being top of the Super League

I don't want to get into an argument but am willing to have a discussion.

We'll be in the supporters club on Friday from around 6 p.m usually by
the pool table.

But didn't Leeds replace Calderwood with Donald, Mathers with Webb and Walker with Toupi?

Apart from Briscoe I'm not really sure which of the players we have let go we should really have kept, and in Briscoes case Radlinski was still only 27 years of age.

There are some good kids coming through at Wigan but the challenge is to get them ready for 1st team action, something I'm afraid the reserve and academy leagues don't IMO appear to do.

Come and have a chat an Friday, we love our Rugby and don't bite.

Sounds good to me which bar do you usually go in to? I guess you will be in Cherry and White?

Your defence was monster in that second half, but come on, how many times will you be gifted two-thirds of your tries?

May have been mentioned elsewhere (site wouldn't load yesterday), but Louis Anderson is a cheap-shot s***house (perfect view from where we were stood, waiting to see what the lie of the land is before sticking one on someone from behind is not big, clever, hard etc, just a s***house trick!). There, got that off my chest.
As for our performance, you need wins like that, not particularly inspiring but a victory over a team with a new coach etc etc.

Explain how they were gifted?

A good kick, a good kick chase and good defence would indicate, to me, that the final try was earned.

Two guys running into each other isn't good kick-chase or defence. A one-handed carry into a tackle when clearing your line isn't good kick-chase or defence.

I have the feeling this could carry on indefinitely, so we will agree to disagree.

That would be my assessment. That Warrington headline could just as easily read "Warrington team put in best performance since the last blue moon and still lose to sub-par Leeds"

The one on the left as you go in through the doors with all the old Leeds photos in.
As I said we are normally stood by the pool table.

Fair enough but I am a firm believer that you earn whatever you get in this game.

That's the pressure of a good kick and chase all good habits to have if you are to win titles.

I think we have discarded our fair share of young players - there is no other option these days, you can't have the gigantic A team squads of the past. In fairness the examples you mention we signed Donald to replace Bai, Calderwood was offered a deal but didn't like it and went your way for the money. Mathers wanted to go to Australia - his contract was up and thet's what he did. I'm sure he would have been offered a contract with Leeds if he had wanted one. Brent Webb was available and it seemed sensible to sign him (replaceing one world class fullback with another). Walker went to Union. Nothing we could do, but again he wasn't discarded by the club. There are not that many centres around these days so we signed a NZ international.

In that time players like Hall, Smith, Watkins, Gibson, Allen, McShane, Burgess etc have all broken into the first team.

Thought you'd be in the ground watching the reserve game captain.

On every try scored a mistake has been made somewhere.

We've arranged to meet up with a few fellow Wigan "strays" in the supporters club.

ah of couse! hicks in the corner

Thats a fair point but in 4 weeks time we wouldn't have been backing up from the WCC which I think had a major bearing on the game (both from a team selection and performance aspect).

The conditions also didn't help as the wind prevented Leeds being able to gain any position from kicks which helped Warrington keep mounting the pressure and in Senior and Webbs absence we lacked as much of the firepower we usually have to strike from deep.

The Stones Bitter replay will show, played 4 (mostly poor yet) won 4!
Read 'em and weep!

Spot on.

That goes with the same massive weight of possession that we gave Hull KR (especially in the 1st half) and they have nothing to show for it either.

If we were playing the like the way we came out of the blocks last season, we'd have blown some of the opposition away. Clearly the club has got a different peak / focus for this season and I expect us to lose at points along the way, but as you say and many of us agree with, the team hasn't even hit any sort of reasonable form yet.

As for Wire ... I haven't seen them in any Grand Finals recently. Maybe they can remind us as to which ones they've appeared in, despite spending shed-loads of cash (including one player who is on a lot more than anyone in the Championship winning Leeds side) ?

Spot on.

Actually this is not unlike the way we played at the start of last season. If you remember the Bulls game in particular we scrambled well and held them up over the line several times. Our attack did the job that day, but the Bulls got more posession than they deserved and on another day could have easily had half a dozen tries, as did many teams last year against us. Bad discipline (which came back to haunt us in the middle of the season and in the CC against Stains) and ordinary ball control cost us the last half of the season (true we had a huge number of injuries but the pattern was set when we had a full squad). I think we rely too much on scrambling and a huge defensive effort when we could do it easier with better discipline and better ball control. Our 5th tackle plays near the opposition line are also not good enough and far too many times we fail to maintain pressure with repeat sets.
Ironicaly we have got all that right in the last two GF's and shown that with good ball control, discipline and patience we are easily the best team in the competition.
It would be interesting to see what possesion stats looked like last season for games we lost and won. It appeared last year that we played mostly without the ball. I don't think we can do it this year and we have started this way already.

To sum it up

It was our best chance (Warrington's - our first team v your second team) of beating Leeds yesterday but your defence was our pondside friends say awesome and our attack didnt know how to break through it. It's been a constant problem for the Wire an inability to break through and score coupled with an inability to hold onto the ball. With the possession and position warrington had we should have won. But that's life. Well done to Leed's defence and young talent

Get you next time ...... maybe?