Wigan 10 Cats 42

Perfection has always been hard to acheive, even in our year of doing the double we would fall off the pace. It's a mental thing, you get a lead like that and your mind drifts, maybe to getting picked for next week, maybe about getting your name on the scoreboard, maybe into thinking about those niggles you are carrying and not making them worse.

It may not be the correct thing, but it is the human thing to do. You think less about the instant and more about can we put 40 /50 /60 on these guys. That's what the fans do, which is fine because we don't have to play, I think in more intense incounters the drop off would not occur. It would be great if it did not happen in every game, but only 5 games ago we where suffering the opposite way where we where poor in the first half, letting sides get a 16 18 20 point lead. The team has turned alot around in that time and we are now on the right track.

I do understand the frustration but I guess my mind is still in the place of this is far better than what we were doing less than a month ago, it was only the 11th of March when we lost to Quins. The direction is good and the turn around in 4 games has took us from thinking we might struggle to make the top 4, to contenders once again. The fixtures remaining this week and next mean we could be top by the time we go to the pie dome.

I'm just trying to be positive.

On a side note, we are playing with 1 man less than the rest of the league in every game through our own choice.

I don't know if it's a fitness measure by Simmons, but there are plenty of 2nd rowers who could cover a back position, yet Simmons does like having cover for the backs.

I do hope it's just an early season strategy, in reality if a back does get injured Wilkin, flannery, dixon, moore, can provide plenty of cover.

It's a 17 man game and we look like for the forseeable future we are going to be playing with 16. That is going to impact on a side. I hope it's not a fixed train of thought, and is flexible depending upon who is available and who we are playing.

I know last year we had a lot of injuries in the backs at the back end, but mostly that was down to Eastmond coming on and getting a knock straight away. It was more unfortunate than a regular risk.

I doubted this approach, but you cant argue with the results

I'd be more worried if we were performing for 80 mins regularly now. There's no point blowing ourselves out in the first two months of the season, we need to win matches now and hit real consistent form coming into the play offs. That's when you win things.

What he said.
Some sublime stuff in the first half. Total lack of intensity second half.