How do you know Pat would have kicked those yesterday? He did have his off days you know. I might agree with you if Matty had been missing shockers but I reckon only one of those yesterday would you class as reasonably easy (I think it was at 16-14). Most of Wigan's tries are scored out wide and it's always hit and miss with conversions from the touchline, especially the right with a right footed kicker. Matty has shown enough bottle to be given a chance.

Why burden Hampshire with all that expectation so early in his career?

This will be the first time a lot of people on here will have known Wigan without a top class goalkicker. We just lost Pat who came in 2006, Farrell left end of 2005 and prior to him we had Frano from 1990.
That's 24 seasons with some of the best kickers this club's ever had.
Getting a top quality player who is equaly as good at goal kicking is far from easy as there are so few around.
Yes we want an 80% goal kicker of course we do. If it was as simple as that we'd have signed Foster from Bradford some time ago. Trouble is as a player he is no where near the calibre we have in the positions he plays.
It may take some time to find one in the mean time some poor sod has to take on the responsibilty and the flak that comes with it when they fall short of Pat's, Faz's and Botica's standard.
If you just look at the stats of the game we lost on goal kicks. For anyone who was there perhaps like me it seemed a bit different at the time.
We can blame Smith, the ref was mediocre at best and other reasons in the blame game.
We still let in two tries when Cas were down to 12 men. That first 15 mins we just couldn't defend our try line. Away from home you will always be vulnerable to a large penalty count, we were and invited it. Some of our handling was poor, how many crash balls this year have we dropped. The Green/Farrell crash ball was dropped, Cas got possession, gained a penalty then scored a try which was six points. How many times that move was tried, failed and the ball ended on the floor I can't remember?
You'd honestly think Cas had looked at video's of Wigan to notice that move.
These terrible opposition teams do cheat don't they?????????
We played poorly, and Cas played better and won.
Things are not too bad though. As poor as we were we outscored Cas in tries right to the end when they equalled us. We have surely two of the fastest wingmen in SL who do and will score lots of tries.
This team will get better, leadership will get better, handling will improve and the wins will come. The players are certainly good enough if they play well.
Goal kicking is a problem, we lost yesterday though through playing poorly.

While that is perfectly true, we still equalled them in tries scored, and would have snatched a thoroughly undeserved win had those 3 misses been successful.

So we would have won, if another/the kicker had had a 100% record... Stretching it a bit...

The team played, badly cas played well.. End of.

Really was a tremendous droppie, really haven't seen many as good under so much pressure

Just give him some time. Smith has a cool head and will grow into this role, he is in a period of adjusting to the responsibility. When the pressure was seriously on, he came up with the goods from the touchline on Sunday, this for me shows that he has the temperament to handle the pressure of being our regular kicker.

The likes of Sinfield, Brough and Walsh have not always been the best kickers around. Even Pat struggled at first but as players start to practice more and take on the responsibility they will improve. Smith will be doing plenty of practice after training and every kick he takes will give him additional experience.

I agree it will cause a major problem in some games we don't have an 80% plus goal-kicker but I'm pretty confident Smith will adjust to the role.

We have been spoilt with freakish goal-kickers in the past, lets not get on his back after a few games.

Perhaps its time to try the option of drop kicking a conversion or two, a new rule that has, up to now, AFAIK, only been used once (Leeds I think) in Super League. Can't be much worse

When did that come in? As far as I'm aware the only change to the rules this season was that the ball had to be deliberately grounded in order to bring about a drop out (previously it could be accidental from players slipping)

It was a new rule brought for the 2013 season as far as i am aware it is still in place.

I don't remember Pat Richards landing anything remotely difficult for at least 6-8 games the season he started kicking.

The odd thing is I also seem to remember Pat struggling with his goal kicking when he first took it on and other posters have made similar comments in past threads about goal kicking. However if you look at Bilko's site it shows that in his first season as main kicker Pat got 83.3% of his kicks and that his poorest success rates came in 2009 and 2010 when he was our established and very reliable kicker (he even had a better success rate when filling in during his debut season in 2006 than in those two years (78.5% success)). In the first 5 games of 2007 he missed only 4 from 18 kicks and then kicked 23 of 26 in the next 5 games. Yet most of us seem to remember him as having started off kicking poorly. Maybe he only missed the touchline ones but those were what we focused on (as we felt Farrell or Dobson would have got them).

It seems like there is certainly something to what Father Ted posted about us fans having been spoiled by a succession of great kickers and that meaning that the first person to start missing a few will take a high level of flak. If most of us thought Pat started poorly in 2007 then judging by the actual figures we have it seems been very spoiled with goal kickers. I'm not saying that Smith has started the year as a roaring success goal kicking wise as he hasn't but when compared to Pat (or the mind's view of Pat's goal kicking) the lad is on a hiding to nothing.

Odem is right when he says that Smith (or anyone else that tries their hand) should be given time to grow into the role and getting on his back certainly won't help him do that. We certainly have a couple of people in the coaching team that can help with developing and improving his technique. I'm sure he will get better and more confident as the season goes on.

Wane is sticking with Smith. Below taken from Wigantoday.net

Meanwhile, Wane has given mis-firing Matty Smith his support and ruled out changing his goal-kicker.

Smith took over the role from Pat Richards this year but his strike rate is less than 50 per cent.

However, the halfback did nail a sideline conversion under pressure at Castleford last Sunday and Wane says he is working hard on finding his groove.

“He continues to practice, he’s improving, and it’s only a matter of time,” said Wane. “I’ll stick to him, I’m confident he’ll come good.”

Wane ruled out the idea of bringing in a specialist goal-kicker, adding: “That’s not my way.

“I want absolute quality in every position and it wouldn’t sit right with me signing a goal-kicker. We have others who can kick - Josh Charnley, Ryan Hampshire - but I’m confident Matty’s work will pay off.”

i agree with Wanes comments; smith is suffering at the hands of the teams' performances and once the team gets into the swing of things there will be less pressure on smith and that will show in his kicking accuracy.

a side struggling puts added pressure on the conversion kicker to achieve the conversion to keep his team in the match, a side in good form provides the conversion kicker with breathing space to settle in and come good, which I believe (and more importantly hope!) he will do.

lets not forget we are 3 games in guys.

Wane is talking rubbish, Smith is only a 50-60 percent strike rate kicker where Pat was a 85-90 percent kicker

A lot of our tries are scored out wide (thos should continue due to the good form of Burgess and with Charnley ready to hit the straps). Tough days ahead for Smith.

Bowen has been known to pop a few over according to his records!

Yet, give the lad a chance.

Quote ="MR FRISK"Wane is talking rubbish, Smith is only a 50-60 percent strike rate kicker where =#FF0000Pat was a 85-90 percent kicker a050.gif'" No he wasn't. www.superleague.co.uk/stats/player_stats

Quote ="MR FRISK"Wane is talking rubbish, Smith is only a 50-60 percent strike rate kicker where =#FF0000Pat was a 85-90 percent kicker a050.gif'" No he wasn't. www.superleague.co.uk/stats/player_stats

There isn't a kicker alive who kicks 90%. Call me a boring statto but even in his best season Richards's only kicked 84%, his average was 78%. Just to put that into context, the most tries we scored against any of the big teams last year was 5. The stats say Richards would kick 4 of them and Smith would kick 2 or 3. So we're only really talking about a difference of 2-4 points when it matters between the two of them, even if Smith stays at around 50%. Believe it or not only 3 of the 12 games we played against the top 5 last year came down to 4 points or less, and none of them were knockout games.

I'd say we've plenty room to give him time, particularly as we know Charnley isn't a good kicker either and didn't really improve with far more in-game attempts than Smith had. If we get to the end of May and he's still only kicking half of them maybe we should look at Hampshire kicking, even if it's just when he comes off the bench. I'd hate for us to bring in someone like Foster who will get those extra 2-4 points but easily lose us more than that through bombed tries and defensive foul-ups.

How about Owen Farrell as his dats as England fly half will be limited with the emergence of George Ford.

I can't tell if you're joking or not.

You are ignoring how missed kicks can change the dynamics of the game. We scored two good tries v HKR but were only 8 points to the good for it. I think we looked pretty deflated as a team when Smith missed the second kick which was an easy kick. One attack off them and it was 8-6. It also gives the other side hope which I also think occurred v HKR and so whatever the stats from last season say I don't think you can conclude those 2-4 dropped points can be dismissed and we would still have won any of those games from last season.



I thought when we brought in average players it wasn't a problem as once Wane and Bitcon got hold of them they would improve. That is the usual excuse if we sign average players

matty smith is more than capable, just needs to learn composure you could tell he was going to miss the kicks he did as it looked like he was over thinking it.

I can tell you it didn't do anything to improve my humour watching Pat hoof over kicks from every bloody conceivable angle at the week end (to add to two smartly taken tries and a 70 yard drop out)!!!

that drop out was something else its good to see that a 32 year old who spent majority in super league can still "cut it in the NRL". But yeah i would rather see him in a wigan shirt every weekend as well. super player who is a Wigan legend, good to see him spreading the joining jack over there as well.

Don't forget though that Frano himself felt his goal kicking was a way into the side because he would not get a game otherwise. He did of course become a very good No 6 in his own right but at first was stuck out on the wing while he learned the game.

So in a way Frano is a good example of including a player in the side just for his goal kicking who isn't that good a player to start with.

Goal kicking was important enough for Monie to do that despite reservations about signing him in the first place (he wanted Phil Blake instead) and it remains as important IMO.