A major reason for the Huddersfield win last night was that they came prepared to play a rugby game & we obviously didn't. They played basic rugby very well which was something that seemed to trouble Warrington right from the kick off. Danny Brough did the job he is paid to do & what a great kicker he is. They have a coach who got the best from his players.
We need to get back to basics & get the little things right that so much depends on.....First job Monday morning should to watch the match video & work out how to defend against a kicker of Brough's calibre & then get our kickers to try & learn from his technique.

You were silent all night!

Funny how your own players don't agree with you take on events! According to some of them we never stopped.

Question: have you ever seen a stand-off get caught in possession of the ball more than Gareth O'Brien?

Yeah .. But only in North west counties division 7

Split second difference between a quality half back and an average one and the amount of time obrien gets caught with the ball tells you all you need to know. You've either got it or you haven't and unfortunately for the top level obrien hasn't and never will have.

I tend to agree. He doesn't have the spatial awareness, quick hands or quick brain.

He is making the runners around him hesitate or over run the ball.

His speed of thought is and never will be top level.

i enjoyed that

, must admit i didn't expect to win, as is usually the case at warrington these days, but i thought we dominated from start to finish, wire had a brief spell just after the 2nd try when they looked like turning it around but in all honestly i never saw us losing that game, even at 13-10 we just seemed to be in the right frame of mind for it.

Well Lefty has said most of what needs to be said in his post on page 5.

It took me 4 hours to come up last night and I got home at 1.30am this morning.
Had seen the team on Sky and so wanted to see them 'in the flesh' for the 1st time this season, but...

I've not seen as poor a performance as that from a Wire team for several years.
Don't want to take anything away from Hudds but once they went ahead we didn't look likely to win.
Daughter was very underwhelmed, and my 80 year old mum seeing her first game of the season kept on saying 'rubbish, rubbish'

Some points -
1. We now have 5 players who all try to scoot from dummy half - Clark, Higham, Russell, Penny, Ratch. If the opposition plan for that they've nullified a main option. It ddin't work at all last night.
2. Our attack in the last 10 meters was pretty woeful - slow and predictable. And what the **** is Sims doing passing more times than a half back instead of getting stuck in? (I do congratulate Hudds on a very good defence. It did all what was required. Just a shame we didn't have the nouse to really test it).
3. Our kicking game was poor - tactical and short. High bombs were variable
4. Not able to change our tactics when they obviously weren't working.
5. Atkins being take out into touch straight from the scrum typifies our performance
6. Currie is a young lad and needs a break in my view. Some really sloppy stuff which becomes a problem with confidence.
7. Most of the players were below par (but partly due to Hudds again). Ratch almost tried to do too much at times and overplayed it. He can't do it on his own and he needs to realize that.
8. Higham and Laithwaite did ok.

Overall simply not good enough and at times so predictable it was like watching paint dry.

Well according to Smithy"s interview on the Guardian website there wasn't much between the 2 teams apart from Brough's kicking.

Pretty much what the fans have been saying all along having a good tactical kicker wins games..!

Now, where di I put those grapes?

Just on the off chance TS reads this forum.... please can you do the following V Wierdnes .....


#1 Start Higham & play Clark off the bench. He looked deadly last season at Cas, but rarely started games.

#2 Drop Chris Bridge. He is a shadow of the player he was. Total anonymous again last night.

#3 Stop insisting in playing Ratch at fb. He's clearly our best strike player, and we seem to have no imagination n the halves.... so move him to stand-off. There's plenty of other players that can play at fb. Kev Penny would be my choice.

#4 Stop with the constant 'running-from-dummy-half' tactic. Its predictable.

#5 Play Ashton Simms off the bench. He starts games very slowly but seems a lot better when coming back on to the field.

#6 Ask Lee Briers to teach GOB, Ratch etc how to tactically kick a rugby ball. They can't do it any worse than what they have been. So nothing to lose really.


I'm sure there's other things that we need to do, but my wife's just shouted me for din-dins.

Well I have to disagree with TS about there not being much between the 2 teams execpt Broughs kicking.
Brough's kicking was a key factor but we really never looked like winning. Hudds did.
They made more meters in attack than us and imo moved the ball quicker than us.

If life seems jolly rotten
There's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing
When you're feeling in the dumps
Don't be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle
- that's the thing.
And...always look on the bright
side of life...

I said the same after the St George game, Benji Marshall didn't have a single stain on his kit as we didn't lay a finger on him all night and he kicked us to death.

Then [iwe[/i cannot kick AT ALL and we have more half backs than any team in the league, how can we have that many and NONE of them have a kicking game?

Deep kicks for position are just dinked over to a waiting FB or W and easily returned, I'll bet, 9/10 times. Some people say that the pack lay the platform but a pack can struggle to trunge forward from their own 10 and make just 30m in a set and then a team with a good kicker can turn a team around to their own try line and go at the opposition or even kick a 40-20. I can think of about four kicks all season at the end of all the dozens of sets we've had where we've done that. It's desperately poor.

A lot of wolves tries came from Joel Monaghan over the years , mainly from kicks unfortunately with having a poor kicking game and lack of a decent kicker is reflecting on Joel's lack of tries and being moved positions

...and I think that was poorer still.

I just thank god I couldn't make the game....

Wasnt he the leagues leading try scorer last year without Lee Briers kicks?

2013 we were in the grand final

2014 we finished 3rd overall and got to play in the world club challenge series

No grapes involved, we're used to a few daft results against pub teams, who we usually finish a lot better than either by winning a trophy or in placings.

In all honesty we don't seem to have a problem with O'Brien kicking to the corners for the wingers, the problem seems to be with the team's general attacking of the line from close quarters....we seem much better from 20 or 30 yards out. O'Brien even did a lovely reverse chip to the posts on Friday which looked to be straight out of the Lee Briers handbook. The good old stand by of the kick for the winger is not used as much as in Briers's day & there seems to be a lot more effort being put in to score nearer to the posts ,probably because we have lost the kicking accuracy of Brett Hodgson from the touch line.

I thought the high kicking from wire put us under a lot of pressure at times- we just fielded them very well - grix put in some absolute class takes- it sort of summed it all up when a great kick which landed just in front of the posts for Monaghan resulted in grix taking the ball out from his grasp in the air.

there was a time when warrington destroyed us by having briers kicking to monaghan who usually beat our defenders to touch down... apart from the fact that our defence was pretty solid i didn't see many of those types of kicks at all on friday.

Who mentioned briers?