Quote ="Paul Youane"Nice bit of writing that, a class above the usual drivell written on these boards (including my own "work"icon_wink.gif.
Its so good I've got a prize for you: the choice is a VW Golf or a Ferrari 458.
Which do you want?'"
Well, obviously a Ferrari 458 would be great, but since I'm 20 years old imagine what the insurance would be for that!! For practical reasons it would have to be the VW Golf.
Quote ="21-12"We need to defend for our lives at Wire in the cup for the first 20 minutes, they are blowing teams away. We need patience and will get our chance early in the second half, this is when they seem vulnerable.'"
I think it's important to defend well in this period but I think the biggest problem that teams have against Wire is how they react to the opening 20 minute blitz. When Wire score some quick tries and get a good early lead teams seem to panic and forget what they came there to do. I imagine most coaches would be asking their teams to keep it simple for the opening period, play sensibly and only risk things when in good position. As soon as it's 18-0 teams seem to panic, like Huddersfield did last night and take risk in their own half and try to force a play.
There was a point in the game where Brown was trying to force a pass down the left to Hodgson and made a mess of it. I remember thinking that the most sensible thing would be to just drive it in and get a kick away and force Warrington back, playing for territory before trying to claw the points back. Wire ended up scoring on the back of that error.
When Saints came back against Warrington it seemed to have a lot to do with them taking a much more simple, low risk approach by taking the ball in from dummy half and kicking sensibly. It also helped that they had Lomax and Gaskell in the halves because young players are so full of belief in their own ability that they always think they can pull the game back. Their heads didn't drop and they went back to a simple game plan.
What Wigan need to do is to not panic if Wire manage to get some early points on the board, although it's much easier said than done. If the team keeps completing sets then it's likely that field position will be good. Wire make more errors than any other team in Super League and forcing them to make mistakes in their own half presents good opportunities.
