Semi final for me too but being top of the league has softened the blow a touch. Its how you respond to defeats that usually shows how good you really are. Cas on Sunday is massive.

Im still gutted from Saturday, add to that we finished last in the Eurovision song contest and it was a day to forget!

i don't get this 'distraction of the cup' from a saints point of view we've really had it from all the different angles in the last 5 or so years..

2005 beaten in the semi final, didn't make the grand final
2006 we won the cup then went on to win the grand final
2007/2008 we won the cup then beaten gf finalists
2009 didn't reach the final, but still beaten gf finalists

i appreciate leeds didn't make the CC final, and won those, but if saints fans blamed the GF defeats on the CC i think they'd (quite rightly) be laughed at

similarly saints fans understand more than anyone how little finishing top means.. and sadly with the top 8 more than the top 5/6, it means even less.. the sad reality is that finishing first, and losing your first playoff match is worse than finishing 4th and winning your first playoff match, you don't even maintain the home advantage if the 'top winner' picks you in the semis..

still, on a development point of view, if/when wigan finish top, it'll be a good achievement on your part, but sadly i would guess anything less than a grand final victory, would be deemed an unsuccessful season?

Unsuccessful yes but progress at least if we got to the GF. Its a long way off yet though and we need to respond well to that defeat quickly or we could find it hard to recover.

I know Wire where not at there best yesterday but they still won, now go back a few weeks to when they put 60 past hudds

I would take our league position over the cup, the league position shows clearly the turn about within our club...YES it would have been great to be in the hat for the fixed draw on Wednesday but im more than happy with the season overall so far.

I dont think there will be many complaints if we finish top or reach old Trafford TBH

Progress is the most important thing, keep making progress and we will inevitably win a trophy

unlikely to win the GF unless in top 2, and to go to Leeds and be 2 minutes from victory is no mean achievement - a vast improvement from the Noble days

We won quite a few games under Noble at Leeds.

I agree. There is no distraction caused IMO just by being in both competitions.

The ONLY advantage to going out of the cup is in having the extra rest weeks during August, when you're likely to need them.



This one I CANNOT disagree with strongly enough.

We have gone from a team that lost 7/10 last year, meaning that we HAD to have a great run for the rest of the season just to give us ANY chance of making a dent in the play-offs, to a team that have lost just 2 of 14, sit 4 points clear, are fitter, faster and stronger, and (more importantly IMO) have a GAME-PLAN.

And not only do we have 1 game-plan (technically, we had 1 last year - 5 drives and a kick), we have a subtly different game-plan, depending upon the opposition.

This was always touted as a "transitional" season (which considering how many times we heard that from Maurice Lindsey, came as a bit of a concern), whereby a trophy would be "nice", but improvement was the name of the game.

If anyone here can tell me that we have NOT improved, then I say that THAT would constitute an unsuccessful season.

We are top, we are 4 points clear, we are still improving.
Even if we fail to lift ANY trophy (I'm including the hub-cap) this year, we are still MASSIVELY improved on the past few years.

I'd still rather be in the semis tbh - strangely i thought that the cup was our best bet for a trophy this year... I'm a little concerned that we couldn't kill Leeds off and even more concerned that we could get to the end of the season and do the same in the Grand Final if we get there. We haven't been in the final of a major comp for a while so it would be interesting to see how the players handle it...

Semi Final and 8 points clear.

The 3 games we've lost this year have all been from winning positions.

Semi final and 4 points behind.

If the team finishing top were champions then I'd say 4 points clear. Under this shocking play off format, if we get to the GF, on a neutral ground, tha game starts at 0-0 and we have no advantage over our opposition what-so-ever. Likely hood would be playing Saints, Wire or Leeds and it would be a 50/50 game. IMO we play 27 league games for absolutley nothing. I hate Saints but for that team that finished top 4 years on the bounce to only win 1 championship is a travesty. Leeds just kept catching them in monsoon conditions in a one off game.

I just can't see the logic here.

As I have said multiple times, there are 2 cup competitions in RL atm.

We are out of the first, and the result against Leeds proves that league position really does count for nothing (ok, it confers some advantage, but not much).

Worryingly for Wigan, imo Sat was the first real test of nerve and cutting edge ability to win, and frankly we failed.

Couldn't agree more apart from the last paragraph. Wigan beat Saints in the last ever derby at Knowsley Rd. That was almost worth a trophy in itself.

If we'd have been offered this position before the start of the season then we'd have all been made up but in reality like Wigan/Leeds Andy says we should be sitting here 8 points clear in the league and in the semi of the cup. We're not and that hurts but we've got to use the defeat on Saturday as a spur to kick on in the league.

I get the feeling our season is going to go either very right or very wrong after Saturday. If we use the hurt in the right way I can see us kicking on and finishing top of the pile quite easily but if they take it badly and doubts creep in we could drop plenty of points and fade away.

One things is for sure...........Micky Maguire will have earned his money this week in picking the players up.

Well I've watched Warrington for 30+ years so I've seen a lot of play off matches.

In my post by the way I was praising Wigan as I believe that they have the right things in place to do very well this year. Very well might not be enough to win a trophy though as I think Saints and Leeds will win one a piece but that wouldn't mean that Wigan, and indeed Warrington, wouldn't have had a good year.

30 years of hurt.

Errr...how many out of the last 3 GFs have been played in monsoon conditions?

Did wire and saints away count for nothing then?

I agree it was a huge test but we will learn from it.

The last two times we have lost games this season we have kicked on and got some wins. We lost to Bradford and won our next 7 games. We lost to quins and have won 4 games on the bounce since then. The game we have lost was a close one we deserved to win. I just hope we respond like we have done the last two times. If we win our next 4 games I will be over the moon.

No, they did count for something. However, they were not as high stakes as this one.