We have Smithies to come back into that pack and lost Singleton after just a few minutes of that game so pretty much played with the same number of props as Warrington did. We also have Harvey Hill to come in and will probably be looking at bringing in a mid season signing given the Cooper injury.

To suggest we "are where we are" (sic) when we have Field out and are running with a backrower in the halves is ludicrous! If you mean in the pack, are you seriously suggesting that Superleague's top tackler who regularly returns over 100 metres would have no impact on our defence or go forward? That's before you consider playing the entire game an interchange down?

Have a word with yourself Duckie.

A lot of Wiganers loitering around here, isn't there?...

Just to emphasise the squad depth problem, Wigan reserves are currently beating Wire by 74-10 at Vicky Park !

The way some of your fans have been going on, I thought Wigan played your reserves last night.

I always put a Wire win on here. I’ve nowt to lose so what’s the point in putting them down for a loss, why do you think I finish near bottom of the prediction league last season and through C19.

I did see it coming and I’ve £25 going on tomorrows game because of the results…. But I’ll still say a Wire win.

I’m not sure what you were watching, but given the pack available and conditions I thought we played a backs to the wall game extremely well. Quite what change in game plan you were expecting is a mystery. As to us being “sheeyite” I would suggest you are either clueless *or a Saints fan.
* on the basis that I wonder what your definition of us last season was.

oh right, cover all bases, I like it



You're basically the bloke who backs 15 or 20 horses in the Grand National and then, when your horse wins, you tell everyone what a great horse tipster you are...

Nope I bet one horse last year and she won. This year I’m not betting at all.
I only regularly bet in SL.

I think you have to give Wigan some credit. It's what they did that stopped us doing what we do best - rather than saying it's our worst performance in my view.

We are jaded - especially in the forwards - and Ill keep pn going on about it - Dudson cost us that game - or at least a better chance of winning.

With Harrison back hopefilly at least we have a fresh forward for Saints.

Just a thought, but are we a bit naiive? Wigan did so much lying on and slowing down and we never seemed to return the favour? We don't seem to match them in that kind of department, do we need a bit more guile? Saints fans saying they struggled to match Wigan in that department last week too. The thing that irks me though, is when we do try that kind of thing, we just get penalised.

Heat of the moment post I'm afraid. Watched it back again and we weren't that far off the mark, did well to keep them to seven points despite being so short in troops and everything, and but for a few naff referee calls we weren't that far away. Get our bigger lads back and we'll hopefully be able to create better platforms for Williams. (I still don't rate drinkwater).

I think most successful teams have the guile to manipulate the referee's judgement . The secret of success is hoodwinking the officials in my charitable opinion.

Yep. There were a lot of Wire fans posting on the Wigan site in the lead up to the match, guess what, not many on there now

Without Mikaele, Bullock, Harrison and Dudson, we were rather short of grunt, and Wigan controlled the ruck. All I wanted before this game started was for us to keep in the contest, which we did (same against Cats, but we took he points) given tough circumstances. If we get closer on the yardage front in the games to come with the top sides, then we increase our chances of winning those games.

I'm not a fan of rotating wingers, and would have rather seen a young forward on the bench to show DP what they had. The effort from the 17 was good enough for me, and overall I'm not really disappointed as this loss doesn't define our season.

The bubble had to burst eventually, what will be more telling is how we react against saints and beyond, and whether we learn the lessons for later in the year (cup games and playoffs).

Yes - there's certainly some merit in that.

You could very well argue that Wigan without Bateman, Cooper, Smithies and Singleton for 75 minutes were without more “grunt” than Warrington were.

Yes, you could, as I was looking from our point of view. We had two backs a hooker and a rookie forward on the bench, which was the weakest, by a long way, that we've had all season. There's bigger games to come, enjoy the bragging rights from last night.

I appreciate you are saying it is from your point of view I’m just pointing out Wigan had more missing which probably means all things being equal they dominate that forward battle even more.

Maybe a case of investing too much in too few players? Maybe further evidenced by the thrashing the reserves took at the hands of their Wigan counterparts today.

At the start of the season, my thoughts were we had too many props and were light in cover for the second row and the outside backs.

Turns out that we end up with a shortage of props that gave us the issues last night. Again, I agree with you on squad depth, it would appear that Wigan have more than we do.

I’m not that worried about last night. We were always going to struggle to make ground with 1 prop and an impact prop. I think this experience of keeping in the game despit so little ball and territory is something that none of our teams in recent memory would have done. Panic would have set in and we would have been hammered.

Honestly Jonh, nobody gives a $h!t about Wigan on here. We know how great you are in your rental stadium and we are quite sure you will always be fabulous.

Probably better just sticking to your own forum though, most on here just think you are bunch of inbreds....

It's not ideal but if we're going to list last night was the mannor I would prefere to leave a game thinking 100% effort and we could have still won the game in the last minute. Not like previous seasons thinking poor effort poor commitment boring rugby and knowing no real improment imminent.

Powell's task it to find a way to neutralise opposition slowing us down at the ptb.

Why do you need to be so rude and abusive to folks opinion or is it just attention seeking...

I agreed with the gist of what both coaches said in their after match interviews:
Powell saying that Wigan gave Wire a lesson in how to play in wet conditions.
Peet saying that Wigan's game plan was to play off the back of Harry Smith's kicking game, which was very good, and the whole team was committed to chasing & defending on that basis.

Perhaps the occasion, and expectation of the big crowd, got to the Wire players a little and they overplayed and forced a few too many passes, which lead to mistakes, which suited Wigan who were happy to be very conservative with the ball and try to grind out a low scored win, which they did.