Quote ="Wires71"Good post. Hadn't their try scoring centre just played a handful of 1st team games?
I'm not buying the "12 men have not played in a final" argument. We had GF winners out there and CC final winners. The same team beat St Helens away. The mentality under pressure is still not resolved nor is the ability to change a game when it's falling apart. Was a thoroughly crap day out and the atmosphere was poor. Take nothing away from Wigan who, in truth, were not pushed very hard.
But we have improved on 2023. Lets see how they respond. 4 very winnable games up next then Wigan and Saints.'"
I think Wire's lack of final experience was a big factor to be honest. Thinking back to Peet's first final against Huddersfield, we had a few players (Bateman, Farrell, Leuluai, Singleton) who had experience of winning big finals but most didn't. We ended up winning, but our performance was less than brilliant and we could've very, very easily lost that game. Had we played a better team than Hudds, we probably would've done.
I think Wire will bounce back pretty well until the end of the season and there's a better than decent chance that the GF will be a rematch. If it is, I'd be amazed if Wire don't turn in a much stronger performance.
One thing that did surprise me a bit was the age of your team though. Obviously it's far away from being an old squad, but I had it in my head that there were more youngsters in there than is actually the case. You'd probably only put Thewlis and Nicholson in that category.
