one brilliant pass to set up lockers try, after that i thought he was abysmal,he spoiled most moves by getting in the way and most of his passes where around players ankles,his bad kick seemed to change the momentum we had at the time, also at every scrum he changed places with gleeson i presume because of his weak defence, thought he was bad last week as well. just not convinced by this guy.

You must be joking? He will have played most of his games growing up in the rain. The conditions didn't suit the Aussies!

different arena in the amateurs.. if you'd have talked about ainscough instead of roberts i would agree. but a very slight half back, in thick of it against currently the best team in super league, water under foot, i cant. the pressure and responsibilty on a half back is unreal particularly in front of a wigan following. you automatically get compared to kenny, edwards, gregory, etc etc, tonight could have done more damage than good. he needs developing gradually this year so he becomes the worldbeater we all know he is capable of becoming

Look, imo you play your best players week in week out regardless of age or weather conditions.

Sam and Ainscough have been two of the better players this year and should be in the side - the fact that they were not is a travesty and people making excuses for Noble just does'nt wash in my eyes.

Weird that, our home fans are always so supportive of our overseas players when we fall behind.

I bet our new signings prefer away games!

i am not a noble fan, i will be mortified if he doesnt go at the end of the year. however i think we need to protect out youngsters. develop them at the right rate. also we do no know the ins and outs of wages, with the rumours about both youngsters earning much more if they play X amount of games, keeping within the cap etc. things are never black and white at wigan, you must know this by now.

I do wonder where all this "we must take care of our young players" lark comes in.

I look at the likes of Maguire and Burrow who were chucked in at the deep end and it hasn't done them any harm, Graham, Cunningham, Wellens, Roby - none of these guys have been "protected" during their careers to date and it doesn't seem to have done them any harm. Michael Shenton at Cas appears able to handle it, as does Welham at Hull KR.

What harms players in my mind is by holding them back when they are clearly ready - Tomkins is ready and playing him off the bench each week should neither tire him out, expose him too early or put him at risk of burn out at a later stage of his career.

the likes of graham,burrow, mcguire were brough into teams that were the best. surrounded by players that could take the pressure off them, pick up the pieces if it went wrong. the same as we were like when people like farrell came through the ranks. we are not that team anymore. we are relying on these players to make us into contenders. unfortunately they do not have the team around them to assist. if anything the rest of the team is relying on the youngsters, and like i said, we do not know what is going on behind the scenes with salaries etc. if the rumours are to believed we cannot play them every week !!!!

Completely agree with the first post's assessment of Tim Smith bar the last sentence. As AJ says that is overstating it.

totally agree

And people try to question Trent's performances or commitment during his time here!

Put it this way if Trent was in the side then we would have won tonight as never in a million years would he have decided to run the ball in his own half, with the game in the balance on the last tackle!

Say what you want about Dobbo tonight as he didn’t have a great game but three conversions, one penalty, a try and a 40/20 at crucial parts of the game won it for KR! If we want to win things and be at the top of the league it’s players like him we need not Smith.

But they weren't
McGuire won Leeds a semi final v Saints and was dropped for the final.
Andrew Dunnaman covered those positions.
Wellens was 21 + by the time he bacame an established player at Saints

look evey one wuz raving bout tim smith tother day mom with passing arraybut....a good 6 and a good 7 always take ball into line and look 4 options ...and either dummy and go ...or draw and give...this puts opposition in a quandry.....let me make this plain....tim smith is a bad buy who cant attack and cant defend ...hes had his one reasonable match for the season and thats yer lot......get rid of him asap

I agree.

Rob Burrow is a perfect example of biding his time.

In his first 4 years for Leeds, he played 95 games, but 58 of these were starting on the bench. At one stage it was rumoured that he would be leaving to get regular starting RL, but his time came and now he is their starting 7.

Smith is an out-and-out scrum half and anyone picking him, or having a pop, for a performance as a stand off really doesn't get what his game is about. Tommy is more of a stand off and he's certainly not a player I'd like to see wearing the 6. After all the time spent picking up his confidence we'll be back to square 1 pretty quickly with him if he is left in that role much longer.

Not far off the mark there!!!

That is what i have never understood given our halves TL is much more suited to be the 6 or second reciever yet usually Smith is given that responsibility. Odd to say the least!

just back and fuming

smith was appalling today. poor kicking game. clueless when under pressure. and the try - that was more lockers angle and KR defenders falling over than a crafted piece of work from smith.

the fact that sam wasnt on the bench, and therefore he was secure in the knowledge that he couldnt subbed - does any one think this has an impact on him ?

I said at the last season having seen a handful of games form Smith he was an out and out scrum half and that the pattern we played where each half back took one side of the pitch would not suit him.

I also said I'd like to see a Smith/S Tomkins 7 & 6 partnership.

It is too controversial for the club to do that. It would mean TL lumped in with the hookers and the consequences of that are many.

Dave

there is alot better scrum half's around the NWC. Even in division 6 players like Chris Scarborough of hindley would wipe the floor with any young wigan warriors half back. As for tim smith, bolocks to if he is a warm dry weather player, does it not rain in australia?

Anyone who has ever played the game recently knows that scrum half is exactly the same position and stand off, the only difference being who feeds the scrum. givde tim smith a respectable front row and some room to work with and he will create everythin, anyone who has ever seen him play in the NRL will know this as he had forwards like hindmarsh and moi moi at parramatta. i dont often post on this forum but christ sake i cannot stand people who think they know the ins and outs of the game (normally from the past 20 years or so) who think they could do a better job. Forwards lay the platform, as everyone knows, if they dont do that, how can any scrum half be expected to shine? Burrow, Dobson, Long, Bosc, etc only shine because of the work the forwards put in, if our forwards worked half as hard as these teams, we would be in a better position in the league than we are now

The forwards played well last night.

Took the ball up strongly, tackled well and really looked the part for most of that game.

Tim Smith still played like a pansy. Go figure.

You really hate people who think they know everything about the game of RL, yet you come on here and do exactly the same thing.

The charge down try wasn't entirely Smith's fault.

He was given the ball point blank without any Wigan players/forwards acting as ''blockers''. He was completely wide open and had to use his step to evade the first fast approaching defender before trying to get some kind of kick away under huge pressure.

I'd put it down to a lack of concentration/laziness from his team mates.

Alex, don't know you but I know you sit in the West stand from reading your posts on here.

When Smith put in the kick that got charged down he appeared to get up and shout something accross at the bench and throw his hands up at the same time and looked generally upset about something.

Sitting in the South it was hard to see what the outburst was about as I thought it was a bit strange at the time considering he had made the error.- just wondering if you could shed some light on it