Lots of valid points on this thread I'm inclined to agree with. I think we may be taking the bait a bit if we read too much into the whole Leeds injury crisis thing. At the end of the day they are the defending champions and have a squad and coach experienced enough to deal with injuries at the start of a season. IF we beat them next week the record books will show that we beat the reigning super league champions and we remain two points clear at the top of the table.

Materson moaning as somebody else has said just seems to be indicative of the responses to getting beat by Wigan this season:
"We need to scrap video refs. If Solomona hadn't dropped that ball..."
"We need to do something about slowing down the play ball it's ruining the game, the fans don't like it..."
"Some of their tackles were too high..."
etc etc etc sounds like it did in the good old days.

I said on the "cas commentary thread" that I'd like to see us keep a tight defence for the last five minutes of a match whatever the score. I don't think we're anywhere near that level yet whereby we can afford to switch off. Two sportin cliches spring to mind:
1 Good teams are ruthless and kill off the opposition.
2 Good teams can get the win despite not playing at 100%

Finally: Scoring out wide - I remember one of my first posts after joining this forum asked "is it just me or do we not use our wingers anymore like in the glory days of Offiah, Preston, Myers etc?". I for one am delighted to see Roberts and Pat topping the charts and the centres wading in with plenty too. It means we're playing proper rugby again.

I know we have been scoring more on the wings but alot of Roberts tries have come when he has been playing full back and were scored down the middle

Last season Wigans wingers scored more tries than any other clubs wingers (in total) , and as a team we were the third highest try scorers behind Leeds and saints.

But how is that possible, it was all 5 drives and a kick..................

I was made up Mossop gave McGoldrick a crack after he was mee mawing at him at the PTB, Mossop was really standing up for himself, maybe the enforcer prop we crave?

Defo a patchy win, good in parts, but lets take the 2pts and now concentrate on the big test against the rhinos on friday

did he hit him looked like he just pushed him to me

I thought he gave him a slap, I hope he did.

On another note was it me or were there rather a lot of people mostly kids with Pat Sharpe style mullets?
All they need is a banjo to get the real Yorkshire look!



Plus how fit were them cheerleaders? Much nicer than ours IMO

Scrappy, but then again you can only play what's in front of you and Cas aren't going well at the moment. Against tougher opposition, I expect us to up our game considerably.

Thought we could have scored more if we had wanted and we would have done ad we not missed 4 conversions

I thought when we needed to we did step it up and more importantly were able to step it up. frustrating afternoon far to many mistakes. but like we say a win is a win

I'm not one to moan about the referee too much, but that Child had an absolute shocker. Some awful decisions and I bet the penalty count was through the roof! That was the most significant factor for me as to why it was a scrappy game.

Wigan played some good stuff. Amos Roberts was opening Castleford up at will. He had an absolute cracker. The best individual performance I have seen from a Wigan player this season. Castleford were dead and buried not long after the second half. We were cutting them open at will until Tomkins went off.

Very pleasing result and I now look forward to next week.

Not difficult, wouldn't touch our cheerleaders with a 10 foot barge pole.

We're saving that performance for good friday

True but how much better did we seem in the second half with Roberts at full-back?

The message in the second half was quite simple - Give the ball to Amos!

He was on fire.

Tuson wasn't on his debut, he debuted against Leeds 2 seasons ago IIRC. I don't think he touched the ball on that occasion though! Sorry to be pedantic



I'll just echo what everyone else said - a win's a win and it's always tough at Cas so I'm glad we've come away with the points. Oh and that Chase is a right little gobs**te.

The wise words of M.M




Bourbon Rat

I cant really remember us ever going to Cas and winning easily, so a 7 try win, although scrappy, is quite a good result. Even more so when we had to swap the back line around early in the fiirst half, then lost Sam mid way through the second.

I might be wrong but did Amos not play fullback for nearly all the game once Phelps got injured early on

He did. All our tries came when Amos was at fullback.

You might be right - i didnt actually notice Phelps leave the field at all - i wasnt even drinking!

I can remember being concerned in the first half about the way the game was going, the bloke in front of me informed me that he wouldnt like the ref to be fitting his carpet as he didnt know what 10 metres looked like!



The ten minute period following the half time team talk changed everything - the amount of players that Wigan had in support was great to see and with Roberts at full back we looked very dangerous. He seemed to be hovering over the shoulder of every player and it didnt take him long to turn the game around - after that performance i wouldnt be suprised to see him shifted to full-back against Leeds.

A moment that made me and a few others round us laugh was when we had a scrum in our own 10, and Amos shouted to Gleese "Where we going?" to which me and a few others shouted "That way" pointing towards their sticks

Just watching the SL Show back, When Joel scores his 2nd try, we have 6 players against there full back.

Sam Lockers Amos(Ball Carrier) Joel Gleeson Mossop

Its support for the ball carrying man we have craved for the last few years now as for the last few years we havent supported the ball carriers meaning we dont capatalise on any clean/half breaks, and hopefully this can continue through out the season.

The support on that break was fantastic, they will have to take in turns who gets the pass to score

It may have been a scrappy win, but how awesome is it to look at the table and see were top, not after only a couple of games but after seven.