Apologies if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but I thought it was a very interesting article. www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/ap ... n-warriors I personally found Wigan's manner of playing last season and at the start of this, quite disturbing. But more to the point, I was wondering if the reason Wigin have not been half as dominant this season is the fact that the opposition has a much better idea of what is coming with a Maguire coached side? TBH, I thought Wigin beat the better team on Friday, and a fully fit Sintelens would have beaten them easily. The Wigan tipsheets are obviously doing the rounds, so someone at the club or recently departed has obviously been spilling the beans.

Apologies if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but I thought it was a very interesting article. www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/ap ... n-warriors I personally found Wigan's manner of playing last season and at the start of this, quite disturbing. But more to the point, I was wondering if the reason Wigin have not been half as dominant this season is the fact that the opposition has a much better idea of what is coming with a Maguire coached side? TBH, I thought Wigin beat the better team on Friday, and a fully fit Sintelens would have beaten them easily. The Wigan tipsheets are obviously doing the rounds, so someone at the club or recently departed has obviously been spilling the beans.

Quote ="johnsmith'sdad"Apologies if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but I thought it was a very interesting article. www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/ap ... n-warriors I personally found Wigan's manner of playing last season and at the start of this, quite disturbing. But more to the point, I was wondering if the reason Wigin have not been half as dominant this season is the fact that the opposition has a much better idea of what is coming with a Maguire coached side? TBH, I thought Wigin beat the better team on Friday, and a fully fit Sintelens would have beaten them easily. The Wigan tipsheets are obviously doing the rounds, so someone at the club or recently departed has obviously been spilling the beans.'" Rusty Crowe has high expectations for Souths and I'm not sure Maguire is the man to deliver them.

Quote ="johnsmith'sdad"Apologies if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but I thought it was a very interesting article. www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/ap ... n-warriors I personally found Wigan's manner of playing last season and at the start of this, quite disturbing. But more to the point, I was wondering if the reason Wigin have not been half as dominant this season is the fact that the opposition has a much better idea of what is coming with a Maguire coached side? TBH, I thought Wigin beat the better team on Friday, and a fully fit Sintelens would have beaten them easily. The Wigan tipsheets are obviously doing the rounds, so someone at the club or recently departed has obviously been spilling the beans.'" Rusty Crowe has high expectations for Souths and I'm not sure Maguire is the man to deliver them.

The article is a pile of crap - qouting unamed sources and coaches comments from 12 months ago. Boo hiss against a coach who says that his side must hunt like a pack of dogs - I can see all the choirs boys in every side crying into their pimms saying thats not fair Madge you making them naughty boys tackle hard.

Another desperate attempt by Wilson to get column inches by writing something negative at the behest of his sports editor. The biggest weekend in the sport this year and all we get is this drivel.

Just how negative is the Guardian writer ? Crikey.

Why can't he find something good to write about, like, for instance, a league in which predicting results is proving nigh-on impossible this season ?

I think it's more difficult than that.

Isn't Andy Wilson a die hard Goon?

Trouble is, he's absolutely right. Unfortunately for Wigan it took the signing of Jeff Lima to prove it.

So wigan are the only ones to perform chicken wing tackles? Interesting to see that only one player has been banned for a chicken wing tackle from wigan this year then isn't it. What is wrong with gang tackles? It slows the play the ball down and allows for the defensive line to set meaning teams actually have to show some skill to score a try. Maybe this has what perplexed some coaches in this league, how to coach good skill and how to break teams down clearly not a problem for the likes of Maguire and Nathan Brown though is it? Coaches with innovation and coaches who always think outside the box.

I don't see the struggle to see that good aggressive defense, yes with some wrestling techniques chucked in, is the backbone for the english team to beat the Aussies because they do it!

I think we should just ban tackling altogether.

Either you have no idea what a "gang tackle" is or you must've missed the fact that they were outlawed over 20 years ago

Wigan are not the only team to perform chicken wing tackles. But Wigan ARE the only club that coaches and actively encourages their players to be overly aggressive and deliberately use joints and pressure points, irrespective of the potential damage to the opposition player. They have trademarked attacking standing limbs or exposed joints and the chicken wing and ninja tackles. Wigan under Maguire have been so desperate for success and acknowledgement that they brought in tactics no other club would ever consider using, purely because of their morality. Wigan however, you get the sense that they would do just about anything, whether it ended an opposition player's career or not. Their willingness to cheat has also extended into their poster boy Sam Tomkins who must spend all week trying out new ways to con penalties out of referees. His new pin the arm and crocodile spin is inventive it has to be said.

I pretty much wrote that article about 6 months ago on here, you will find it if you search for it. It has been commented on by just about every coach in Super League since. Super League is going to be better off without Maguire and hopefully it will mean the cheating and dirty tactics disappear rather than becoming commonplace.

Sam Tomkins arrives for training

I love it when anyone has a dig at Wigan



Classic Wigan

It's typical of some people in the game over here. Instead of embracing good, physical, fair defence and maybe adapting it into their game, they want it outlawed and further lower the intensity of the game. Then they'll be confused as to why the England team can't compete. You'd never get the Aussie or Kiwi's to start playing a bit softer against us!

How one eyed are the Wigan fans on here? Its got nothing to do with playing hard its the techniques that you use that are potentially very dangerous. When Hull played hard against you we were branded as thugs and Willie Manu was hung drawn and quartered for daring to hurt little innocent Sam Tomkins. Or is it only Wigan that are allowed to play hard?

Exactly. They just cannot see any truth in it. When you have a stream of established league professionals and journalists (Most who haven't got any reason to be bitter towards Wigan) come out and say the same thing you would think they would at least entertain the idea. It's not about getting numbers into the tackle or being physical, its about deliberately using and coaching techniques that are likely to injure the opposition players.

Another example of Wigan's desire to win hurting the spirit of the game was Hampson running in front of Foster when he was about to make that kick on Friday. You could see he was sent on with specific instructions to do that.

tell us when you start doing that and we'll all have a look.

I think that is the bit where it is going wrong

I'm a bit intrigued by this. I'm a Wigan fan and so I probably am biased towards my team, I'll readily admit that. As fans of other teams, is the issue that Wigan are tackling too aggresively or that we are supposedly intentionally trying to hurt players? If the latter then shouldn't there be a long list of players out injured after playing against Wigan in the last year and a bit? I've seen plenty of poor/dangerous/aggressive challenges against our players in the last year, does that mean other coaches are sending out their players to injure Wigan players?

wilkin got hurt by it, and spoke up before it happened again, and you lot pilloried him.

Fair play, although I would suggest that Wilkin was over exaggerating and didn't seem to be injured. Rugby League is a tough game played by tough players, injuries happen and that is unfortunate, but I don't think I've recently seen an injury caused by a Wigan player who went out to deliberately cause an injury? Lima in the Millenium Magic games was out of order, I'd suggest that the chicken wing on Soliola (think it was Soliola?) was a very bad challenge (can't be called a tackle imo) and he was rightly banned because of it. Had there been challenges like Newton on Long then I'd be the first to agree, but I just haven't see this intent to cause injury.

You might not have done, but do you not think it's a tad suspicious that so many experienced professionals have said it? It's not like it's just one journalist, his work is basically a wrap up of what so many have said since Maguire has been here, and a lot of them haven't been made directly after a defeat to Wigan either so there is little to suggest it's just bitterness.



Mick Potter isn't one to get into mind games or politics either.

Of course it is suspicious, but surely because of the suspicion and interest it would have been proven by now, and we'd have a long list of injuries to point at and say "Look what Wigan players have done!". Just because people are saying something en masse doesn't make it a fact. I can see very little difference in the way we have defended this year (other than we haven't been as good

) and the way we defended last year. Yet last year the talk was about Wigan lying on, not Wigan trying to hurt players. The only difference I can see is that Lima (rightly) got banned for a chicken wing and then a lot of people used that to claim Wigan are trying to hurt players. I think we'll have differing opinions on the challenge on Clarkson, I think it was on a player that was still moving forward, not held and was above the knee, but in someways that's irrelevant as he was found guilty, banned and so missed another game. So that's two incidents in which a Wigan player (the same player) has put in what has been found to be a dangerous challenge and has been banned. Does that mean that Wigan go out to deliberately injure the opposition players?

If you provide some facts and figures to suggest we injure more players than other teams, then ill start to listen to this argument, at the moment its all hearsay and strikes me as bitterness towards Wigan boiling over like usual.

All maguire has done is bring some NRL tacking techniques to SL, the SL is always playing catchup because it wont innovate, just criticise. England RL will get thrashed in the Autumn partly due to this.