Wow, I was out last night and not really tracking the score saw half time score and thought, typical Wigan giving a newly promoted team it’s first win. Couldn’t believe the final score.

Like has been said we’re way off being what we can be.

Call me a happy clapper but that result will do us good, big time kick up the back side without costing us 2 league points.

Theres no way last year we’d have come back and won and scored 29 points.

Next week will be a massive test and a real indicator of where we are (Catalan superb Friday night and will welcome Sam, Mickey, Dudson etc back). A loss feels like it’s coming but we’ll see.


Big credit to Toulouse, hope they sneak a few wins and survive.

Travelling support on social media looked great!

Those kicks that Miski dropped were an absolute nightmare to deal with, their winger was a big dude too and just had a massive advantage in the running start. I'd applaud the kick and the catch on their side more than criticse Miski.

Other than that, how did he do though? Did he take the ball in strong?

Agree.

For a start off, we don't kick 4/5 last year so we have clearly worked on that.

I don't think we win the Hudds game last year either so am more than happy with where we are so far.

I thought the same about it being a kick up the backside/reality check, but with the bonus of no dropped points. But this year lessons *are* being learnt, it's not the same old, same old every week like last season. I'm sure we will be better and competitive against les Cats.

It was at this point I truly believed the game was over, Lams team would have probably shipped in a further two tries without response.

Toulouse looked completely transformed when they introduced Gadwin Springer and Justin Sangare at roughly the same time
(about twenty minutes in), those two completely destroyed us down the middle with hard yards and multiple offloads which gave the rest of the Toulouse team the belief to not only compete but win the game.

Most of you will now have seen the highlights or even the full game by now, so I don't need to say the the best team on the night definitely lost, however credit must go to the lads for pulling it out of the bag. Disappointing we put ourselves in that position though with some incredibly weak tries scored against us and long patches of average play.

Overall the weekend has been fantastic, the atmosphere in the Melting Pot after the game was incredible.

We now move on to Catalans at the weekend with a lot of food for thought. Hoping for a much improved performance (will need to be to compete).

From the highlights I was quite impressed with some of the tries we scored actually, but like MattyB says some poor ones in defence.

On the two kicks to Miski......I'm not a fan of the tackled in the air rule because I think it takes away being able to compete for the ball which both players did for those two tries and we simply lost the battle, BUT, if Miski catches either of those then it's probably given as a penalty because of the collision in the air, so where do they draw the line in the rules?

And it’s even more frustrating when it happens in the first set of the Thursday sky game and Leeds get a penalty. It’s a different game we watch when it’s on tv and when it’s not and that isn’t right.

As for the game, I’ve watched the full first half now and we started off playing some of the best rugby a Wigan has played in a while. We then fell apart due to a mixture of poor errors and bad luck and got ourselves in a hole. I’m probably not quite as critical having now watched that first half as opposed to just listening to it. These things can happen, every bounce goes against us and we’re just constantly back peddling. I’d be more worried if it was just a really slack attitude across the board and I didn’t see that.

I'm pretty sure last season that would've turned into a thoroughly horrible, demoralising defeat. The fact that we turned it around and got the win shows the improvement in mentality in the squad.
Massive defensive improvement required for next Saturday but knowing we can score from anywhere on the pitch leaves a lot of room for optimism.

Like I said, I don't like the rule. I understand why it's there but for me you can see the difference in looking to challenge for the ball and taking the man out in the air.

I don't think either challenge is a penalty BTW, I just think that given the two players collide in the air it seems strange that it isn't deemed to be one when you see basically every single piece of contact given as a penalty on Sky regardless of whether the defensive player catches the ball or not.

I just couldn’t understand the Leeds penalty on Thursday and you then get the two Miski ones not being penalised. I’m with you, none are penalties but the microscope on the TV games is far more intense than the games not on tv IMO and it just seems to be getting more and more common place for a ref on a TV game to get word in his ear that he should penalise teams.

It almost looks at times like if a player decides to lie on the floor rubbing a body part, the officials feel as though they need to find some foul play to cover theirs and the games back. There doesn’t seem to be such a thing as an accidental collision anymore.

Agree

7/7 under Lam. just sayin.....

Lam in!

and then we played Catalan away

They’ve spoken a lot about that Catalans game over the last few months. I’ve noted Peet calling it out as a day we never recovered from on a few occasions and I get the feeling it’s the game we have circled on the calendar to really target. I’m pretty confident we’ll get our best performance of the season this Saturday. They’re a good side though and that may not be enough. Much could depend on who they get back from the Wire game. That was a seriously impressive result with the lads they had out and as a minimum they get McIlorum and Dudson back.

Massive confidence booster (players staff fans) IF we get a result on Saturday

I have yet to see he game, hoping to give it a watch tonight on Wigan TV, however I have seen a number of comments in regard to Smith having a poor game.

Worrying if true although would need to be put into context against how his forwards played and if they got anywhere near laying a platform, which it doesn't sound like we managed to achieve.

I'm not sure how many chances he is going to get this year with both Tommy and Cust settling as a good combination but I do think he needs to take his chance sooner rather than later before we start thinking about our options for next year.

The first 15 minutes from Wigan were top class. Ultimately the momentum shifted after errors from Smith and Miski and we struggled to get it back after that.

It’s ridding his game of the silly errors that will make or break Harry Smith. Maybe he has a mare of a second half (not seen that yet) but in the first half he starts really well, great first kick, a hand in the try’s and looks busy and threatening. The issue being him making 2 back to back errors part way through that first half and there’s a total momentum shift in the game on the back of them.

You take those out and you have a totally different outlook on his performance and just see the 2 try assists, his 27 tackles, him linking well with other players in all the major highlights and him banging over the match winning drop goal.

I thought Bilko spoke well in commentary at 10-0 us, saying we just needed to settle down a little, consolidate and let the process take care of things for us and the points will come. Unfortunately Smith makes one error, follows it up pushing a pass down the left hand side and then we’re on the back foot for the next 45-50 mins. It’s unfortunate for Smith in some ways that it plays out like that because it totally overshadows the positives but it should just highlight to him how important it is that you don’t switch off, even when you’re cruising.

First ten mins second half-Smith makes two cracking kicks in goal, resulting in one drop out and one try but he’s also thrown a terrible pass in to touch.

Rid the errors and he’s a player but can he do it.

Careful there John, you sounded like you were almost sticking up for him there

Clean slate for all players, under this new management team.

Some get more time than others given last years performances. He is a lad that really needs to take his chances when he has them, but if as others have said he is playing behind a beaten pack, that has to be taken into context.

That's it for me. I'm judging nobody on last season (or any of Lam's tenure TBH) and will see how they go this season when their chances come. There are players I'm expecting a lot from (those that performed "the best" under Lam) and some that just need to tick a box.

I genuinely think there is a cracking little player in Harry Smith, but unless his pack does its job for him we may never truly see it.

Last 30 mins he didn’t have a lot of ball and in general I thought it was our worst spell of the season as a team in quite a few ways, even taking in to account the late comeback. The failure of Toulouse to set up properly for a number of drop goal shouts was astonishing. We just kept giving them the ball back for another go.

All in all on Harry Smith he’s made 3 poor errors in the game and they’ve overshadowed some really positive stuff and it’s his first team career summed up in one game tbh. I still have confidence that the error count can go down, as the positive inputs go up and you’re left with the player we all thought he could be a couple of years ago. He needs to make it happen though.

EDIT - Wrong thread.