I think there is a difference between "should have won" and "deserved to win". In my eyes, Huddersfield fall into the former. With the possession and territory they enjoyed they should have won. But their safety-first tactics held them back a little and prevented them from really forcing their advantage home when they had it. In terms of "deserved to win", I'd say I would have no complaints as a Wigan fan if they had won, but they didn't do enough to definitively be the better side. As I say, the old adage that "you have to lose one to win one" looks like it suits Huddersfield here. This was their loss, we will have to see if they can bounce back, learn from this, get to another one and win it next time.

Lance Todd Trophy voting






Chris McQueen, 14
Ricky Leutele, 9
Oliver Russell, 6
Tui Lolohea, 5
Jermaine McGillvary, 2
Harry Smith, 2
Daniel Levi, 1

Votes have to be cast by the 75th minute but even so........................

I still think it makes them the better side but were they hugely impressive? I felt not and was saying that to our group walking back to the coaches. You can’t play not to lose and they did that late on. I can’t really blame them being conservative throughout the game, as they probably just thought they could wait for our next implosion in our twenty. I think the long and short of it is that had we turned up and played to our best and Huddersfield play as they did, we’d have won pretty comfortably but it wasn’t to be. Our errors and our execution of those plays you mention were way off but we still get the win. I’m confident that it actually bodes pretty well for us going forward.

Reading some of the journos on Twitter over the weekend, such as Aaron Bower and John Davidson, it’s little surprise the vote went like that. A great occasion and as per, the journalists in this country are pure doom and gloom and focus on how Smithies not getting binned costs Huddersfield the game. Neutral these guys are not! Positive about anything involving rugby league? Never. You wouldn’t think they earned their livings from the game, considering how often they stick the knife in.

I can get onboard with that.

Kinda highlights the difficulties when fans say they "want to be entertained" too. I know I'm playing both sides of the argument here, but previously I've been happy to watch us do what Hudds did (just better) i.e low risk, conservative rugby. I do think that, if you play that style, you need to score more points. Under Madge, we'd do something similar but score plenty of points too.

Bower works extremely hard to keep his dislike of Wigan from surfacing, but sometimes he can't help himself.

The daft part of Saturday were the errors in our twenty weren’t about chancing our arm and coming unstuck. They were just concentration lapses. The Cust kick in our 30 metres just before half time was a brain fade. We’re all wanting to see us play attacking rugby but that just wasn’t the time or place. That’s what excites me really, we fix up those silly errors and pick out moments better and we’ll be in any game due to the attacking talent we have and the pace we posses. It was a 5 or 6 on 10 performance I thought and we still got the win.

I know it happens every week but picking a man of the match before the match is over is very strange.

The match is 80 minutes.

3 class involvements in 3 tries deserved more than a couple of votes.

RL media mustn’t like us, Ratchford got in in 2018 GF.

He does indeed. John Davidson doesn’t hide it at all and then a guy like Richard Shaw-Wright makes you want to give up on life, let alone Rugby League. I don’t mind Phil Caplin tbh. He’s open and honest about loving Leeds but he tries to be balanced and tries to focus on the positives. I don’t know why some of them don’t go and get another job. A good mate of mine was in the same game until about 12-18 months ago and he’d maybe been ground down by the negatives and you wouldn’t get much positive out of him. Fair play to him, he walked away and got a new job. Banging the drum for everything negative about rugby league must be tiresome sometimes for these guys.

Phil is so bitter about Wigan’s dominance in the 80/90s not one week goes past where he doesn’t mention us having to sell Central Park to fund it all.

He can have that one I guess

We did smash them and stop them winning anything for years. I find him generally positive about the game as a whole though, whereas some other actively seem to dislike it.

I said to my mate at the time that it was our 'Aguero moment'. I'm struggling to think of a final where we were losing up to the final couple of minutes, on the last tackle with nothing seemingly on and then bang, winner! Even Manfredi's try in the GF we were already winning, his try made it safe.

It’s just not done much at all in Rugby League. It’s easier to score a try, than it is a goal, so games aren’t generally as close as they are in football and that’s leads to very few moments like that one on Saturday, especially in finals. The try on Saturday wasn’t as late as the Welsby one in 2020 but you pretty much knew it was game over when he went in (easy to say now mind, I was packing them when they were kicking off) and that led to wild celebrations, the like of which I’ve not seen for a long time and probably won’t for a long time again.

That feeling is just amazing. You’d love to just go back and do it all again and again. We can count ourselves lucky that we were in the Stadium to witness it and not sat watching it on the TV like the Saints fans were in 2020. As much as we’re rivals and as much as they still all clearly love the moment, there’s nothing like being there, going crazy, jumping on strangers, running about like a not right and being with all your family and friends and they didn’t get that.

On a side note, I saw some stats for John Bateman earlier from the game in a post by England Rugby League and it got me thinking about the expectations on the lad. I thought he was good on the day and one of our better players but didn’t feel like it was anything out of the ordinary. He made 17 carries for 186 metres and 34 tackles. That’s just outstanding and he should be lauded but I think we just expect so much (and sometimes probably too much) from him and I’m guilty of that.

Great to see him playing so well and enjoying himself.

Wouldn't get in the Saints team

There's another side to it though. I think that Welsby try would have been horrific to have seen in the stadium. Was bad enough from behind the couch.

Imagine the feeling in the stadium



I just walked out the living room in a huff and sat on my own in the bathroom for half an hour

I couldn’t have done that at Old Trafford (well I could but they’d have locked me in).

Rugby league is a simple game. The best team is the one which scores the most points and concedes the fewest. It is not synchronised swimming with points for artistic interpretation. It really annoys me to hear people lauding a negative game plan that allowed the opposition to snatch the victory at the end. That just says that Huddersfield did not get it right. It is the same when, in the football, coaches complain that the opposition parked the bus and would not allow the super rich to play their game. The best team on the day can overcome the oppositions game plan and win.

If I remember rightly, there was a similar sense of outrage in the press, led primarily by the Yorkshire Evening Post, when Wigan beat Leeds at Wembley in 2011.

i've watched the game twice now (sober) on TV, and really dont get how McQueen got man of the match. He did nothing with ball in hand that i can recall, defensively solid, but nothing more than that if i am honest

Leutele, caused us problems with ball in hand, as he is a good strong runner out in the centre

outside of that, not 1 player from either side really stood out as an outstanding contender for MOM. Hudds did a good job on their kick chase, to prevent French or Field getting any free space to run into Their last plays, were boring, downright boring, surrendering the ball virtually every time they were in Wigans 20, and happy to turn it over. To me that just showed lack of ambition on the day, and probably the reason they lost the game. If they had tried a kick into the dead ball area, try to force the error or repeat set, then it may have been different but they didnt

Harry Smith or Morgan Smithies from a Wigan perspective were IMO our top performers, but for only 2 votes to be cast for Wigan players just shows that it was the Huddersfield fan club who voted for the MOM awards. Harry Smith, involved in all 3 tries, cleared up a couple of Hudds kicks through as last line of defence. Our forwards, especially Faz / Bateman, did their usual, tackled and made yards all day, but nothing special from either of them, but a Hudds player gets MOM for probably less than either of those 2

The Rugby League press has become so Yorkshire centric it has no real value or voice worth listening to. You may as well have asked McQueen's mum to pick the Lance Todd.

Looking at stats on tackle busts, breaks, attacking metrics we were far ahead of Hudd's.

I still don't get the perception Hudd's were the better team.

Sure we made some stupid mistakes, we gifted Hudd's field position and possession.

But our quality in attack was far higher, and our defence due to putting ourselves under pressure was far better. Better attack, better defence usually means you deserve to win.

That's my thinking, but you know what - ultimately it doesn't matter. How many people can remember the scores, or performance from our 8 in a row?

The result is all that matters. We won & the trophy came home. Let the bitter Hudds fans talk about how they were the better side, or how they've got some kind of moral victory. The Trophy once again sits in Wigan's trophy room.

I can always remember 27-0

https://wiganwarriors.com/blog/2022/05/ ... n-numbers/ Posted this in the wrong thread.

https://wiganwarriors.com/blog/2022/05/ ... n-numbers/ Posted this in the wrong thread.