He's in charge....whopper

Yep, he didn't pass when we were wide open on the right. He threw the ball into touch in our own 40. He crabbed across the field while the rest of the team stood watching. He crept in field instead of staying on his man. These are the things that lost us the game in the last two that we were in control of. You know, the actual acts that decide a game. Direct your anger at the players, they got themselves into the good position and they frittered it away, end of story.

I really do see your point, and I think that player skill is a not insignificant factor to consider. I would add that Smith can't be held accountable for the Tierney decision or the penalty against Atkins that never was that both led to tries.

However, the buck stops with him and his poor management has to account for us not being able to see a game out; for capitulating when we lose a player; for not being able to hold on to leads; for not being able to attack with any kind of consistency; for consistently playing odd combinations of backs and snubbing obvious choices. He may not be the person throwing into touch or knocking on, but he tells the players what to do and he decides who plays.

Once upon a time but only for a minority amount of time in the entire history of our sport. Only from 1895-1906, one year in 1918, the time during WW2 up to 1947, 1962-64 and then 1973-1997 have the champions been the team who won the league ladder. That's only 46 years out of our sport's 121 year history. The other 75 years the champions have been the team who have won the Grand Final (or any other name it has had).

Halifax were the first Grand Final winners in the 1906-07 season. Saints have won the most Grand Finals with 11, Wigan and Leeds have each won 10, Huddersfield 7, Swinton 6, Hull 5, Salford and Bradford 4, Wire Halifax and Oldham 3.

The three times we've been champions have all been through Grand Final wins.

To be consistent over the season is all fine and dandy. But when a team can show it can win in the most do-or-die situations of a Grand Final to not only show they were consistent enough to get there but to go and win in such a high pressure game where the opposition take home the spoils if you don't - that's the sign of a true champion team.

Okay as its fallen, next week, is actually that kind of situation to a certain extent as the top two happen to be playing each other in the final game but that very rarely happens (I'd bet it's not many times in 121 years).

No mention of Ben Currie I really hope he is okay but it looked bad. I did something similar myself many years back and it was not good.


Never like to see players injured and he is without doubt one of your key players.

How can sam tomkins constantly abuse and moan at the ref without getting binned, could it be that steve gansons son plays for wigan and they don't want to upset the apple cart or just because it's tomkins

Hicks went to his pocket for the card then changed his mind,saw that right in front of me,gutless.

Yeh saw that myself,he's done it every time i've saw him and nothing gets said

To be fair to ratboy he did manage to throw himself out of the way for at least two of your tries.

He probably picked up the habit from watching Lee Briers......

I'm always optimistic, but even i had given up that one..... You just seemed to fall apart.

I think Wigan showed us how to win when staring down the barrel of a gun. It's called a winning mentality. Saints have it in bucket loads too.

Smith more or less said we started playing differently when wigan went a man down,he's the coach he should have got off his and sorted it out rather than waiting till the games over.

I guess you're not old enough to remember a chap called Briers, used to play for you...?

For yesterday alone, you're right. But, how many times have you men lost a major final against quality opposition under Smith? Every one? That speaks to the mentality coached into the side and that is Smith's responsibility.

Does beating Leeds in two finals not count then?

Geoff,there's a difference between questioning decisions and telling the officials to f off every week.

Actually those 2 games are prime examples. Warrington started the games and were the better team and then won comfortably. But when the other team is able to match warrington and show they can cause problems, or it's a relatively close game, warrington lose. Even some times warrington have squandered positions when they should have closed out an easy win.

That's the point, under Smith warrington will only win the trophy on the line games if they rack up a lead and the opposition is easily second best. Even simply racking up a lead has proven to not be sufficient because when the opposition have some fight warrington can't close it out.

Leeds have literally won 6 grand finals when it was knip and tuck right up until the last 10. You need to be able to do this to post titles. Warrington have consistently shown under smith an inability to do this and thus, zero titles.

It is not every player, Hill was an absolute tower of strength out there yet again.

We really missed the heart of Ben Westwood out there to back him up.

To be fair Flex ,the Leeds final at OT was disrupted by Ryan Bailey starting a fight that took our eye off the ball when we could have possibly scored & gone on to win. IIRC Leeds capitalised & scored at the other end !
I do get your gist though about a common thread.

The bailey incident was with a minute to go, game was gone. If you look at smith's success and failures you see a common trend. Put a tony smith team in the sutuation leeds were, in the last 15 mins of the grand final last year 2 points ahead, and what would have happened? at 22-20 leeds killed the game dead, kicking to touch in the croner, not even going for 2 points in order to maintain absolute field position dominance. A tony smith team would have been throwing mental cut out passes 30 meters from their line into touch, to try and score the dazzling try.

I couldn't agree more. We can't seem to play basic,sensible rugby.

Funny thing, I can't remember much about that grand final, I can remember all the challenge cups,the 13 final but the twelve, not much

This lack of ability to win big tight games was in evidence back against Leeds in the semi in 2011. We are great if we blow teams away by half time. We are a different story when it's close. Game management and composure under pressure.

Unfortunately,on Friday we didn't have the manpower to play a tight game up the middle which doesn't fit with our style anyway. What was noticeable though was when Wigan played us at our own expansive game we were worryingly overwhelmed.

Prime examples or not, I was referring to the quote which wrongly claimed that we hadn't beaten quality opposition in a final. Leeds were a quality side both years we beat them at Wembley and the fact we blew them away had as much to do with Tony Smith as our collapse on Friday night did.

If we're to analyse Smith's time here and discuss his failings, lets at least keep it valid and not devalue our achievements under him by saying we've not beaten quality opposition.