I agree, Hughes is doing a great job there. In attack he might not be up to Carmont standard but I don't think there were many times when he could have done better during the game, except for the dropped ball.

I don't think he's seen as Carmont's long term replacement but he's doing very well as a stand in.

+1

I think he's doing ALRIGHT nothing spectacular but average
I just think if he's not carmonts replacement and apparently gelling is thought he'd of got a game by now with hughes not setting the world on fire

I will get a lot of stick from Wire fans if they read this but I feel Hock is as good as Westwood if not better and therefore should be in the England side on current form.

oh no you didn't.. ben westwood's the greatest second rower in the world, nobody can do what he can do. Sam Thaiday? Tony Williams? No thanks, we'll take Benny Westwood every day of the week!

Gelling wasn't brought in particularly as Carmont's replacement though was he? he just as much as Hughes is very much a work in progress. I actually think he's doing pretty well considering. He must be impressing more than Gelling is in the reserves to be keeping his spot.

First of all I'd like to state that not only did we beat Catalan Dragons, but we beat Richard Silverwood as well. Talk about one set of rules for one team.

The entire match was a real grind, in no uncertain terms due the tactics employed by Catalan. To say they were niggly would be an understatement. The fact that for the majority of the match the likes of Hock and Lauaki didn't react, went a long way to us winning that game. The first half was a real arm wrestle, yet we should have come away from it with a lead, and healthy one at that.

The second half was much improved. The fact that we scored first despite the best efforts of Silverwood say's a lot. I've come away from the game greatly buoyed by the teams mental strength and concentration levels. A couple of years ago we'd have buckled in a game like that.

An all round damn good team performance. I'm particularly pleased for Ben Flower, he really looks to be settling in and finding his feet. Our own, albeit probably never as good, Paul Gallen IMO.

As for the criticism of Hughes. I'm much rather he was as safe as houses in defense, which he is. Than it be the other way round, and he be responsible for leaking in try's left, right and . His attack will come with time. The fact that we're the leading points scorers without our best centre playing is an encouraging fact.

I always pop on to see how he is progressing I really rate him and glad he is doing well for you, he was never used correctly by Agar!! and if you check his stats for last season his silly penalties were folklore he hardly gives penalties away!

Some fans like to make "facts" up that others latch on to and continually spout them. The Lauaki one is obviously one of them. Or they take a one-off bad performance and use that as a representative overall judgement of that player. Wigan's most common one off other team's fans is that Sam can't defend.

Good, solid performance, I also didn't expect to beat Catalan by 4 scores, their only excellent piece of play for me was the first score for them.

Silverwood was inconsistent, Wigan "stole" the ball, penalty given......same situation, Wigan "knock on", scrum given.....without the referee apparently seeing the offence, unless there was a word in his ear?

As always, room for improvement.

People see what they want to see, Sam is a good defender if my memory serves me right his stats were good last season.
TBF though Hame was not always effective for us (Agar was a complete tool), however there were glimpses to understand his potential, the best game I saw him play in was an International he has good hands and if you get him running onto a ball he will make some good yards. Just mentioned on our board about the time I met him (real nice bloke, softly spoken but huge!) it was snowing and he had flip flops on

From my experience that doesnt count for much come the end of the season!

It did the season before.

Yeah but you were also the "Play offs biggest bottlers".... and that counted for a lot

And quite a few seasons before that.

It would take a brave man indeed to gamble that not being the best defensive side in the league or the best attacking side could still win you the title.

Some traditions simply must be kept up...Wire bottling playoffs and Saints bottling finals are two prime examples...

Silverwood had an absolute shocker. As did his touch judges. Not a good day for the officials. Wigan won comfortably in the end but due to refereeing errors the game was a contest for far longer than it would otherwise have been.

Is it just me or does he seem to lose concentration and guess at decisions? When the ball comes free in a tackle he doesn't seem to have a clue. When he's on form he's the best ref in this country but I thought he was awful today, particularly 1st half.

With the best will in the world, when he looks at the video he's going to be embarrassed, surely? He missed so many things and made so many mistakes, it really wasn't good. At all.

As usual though the ref get very little assistance from the touch judges. You would think that if the referee were having an obvious off day the touch judges would try a little bit harder to help the ref.

+1

I thought our poor ball control combined with Silverwood's whistle-happy performance prolonged the contest. Shame really, I was looking forward to this game regardless of the result, and felt it was a stop-start affair. After Alibert and Thaler's incompetent performance on sky on saturday, I do despair about the style of refereeing in the competition. It's pedantic, inconsistent, and generally speaking, the performance of the referee has too much influence on the game.

That was certainly the case today.

The guy seemingly couldn't wait to blow his whistle - usually when Wigan were just getting a roll on. I agree that we weren't brilliant, but we were easily the better team. Silverwood contributed to suppressing that for two thirds of the match.

Our forwards stood up well to a very big Dragons pack. McIlorum steered us around the pack extremely well (his best game in a Wigan shirt IMO) and Gaz Hock stood out in the pack - must be pushing for England honours along with Lee Mossop. In the first half we bombed far too many chances & Catalans took advantage of that taking the lead at half-time.

Second half we still made some poor errors, but overall our passes began to stick more & once we hit top gear we never looked like losing. Les Catalans seemed to tire for me, which you must credit our kicking game/effort in the forwards. Sam/Finch/Leuluai/McIlorum/Lockers when they hit top front just tear teams apart in what appears considerable ease.

Excellent win and a brilliant crowd too. Areas to work on next week, but you can't complain too much when you still win by a healthy scoreline! Top stuff.

Hock for me was the best player and as people say his silly offload was a bad point, tbf to him both lockers and tommy was with him and tommy let the cats players get it as he should expect the offload especially from hock

Also thought lockers had another shocker in the ways of losing the ball by literally throwing the ball away in 2 good positions in the first half

Exactly. When Sam supposedly dropped the ball was a prime example. Two fat Cats all over him rip the ball free and Tricky Dicky Silverwood walks over looking and thinking "What happened here then?" because he clearly didnt have a clue so he just assumed Sam had dropped it! The tool. He missed a lot of decisions yesterday, some were so blatant it was embarrassing.

These penalties given at a whim are the most annoying aspect of Silverwood's refereeing, especially when it's so inconsistent. The incident you mention yesterday was typical. A Wigan player is tackled and the ball spurts loose from the resulting pile of bodies. Silverwood walks casually over and announces a knock-on. A few minutes later exactly the same thing happens when a Cat is tackled, and he saunters over and awards a penalty for ball-stealing. In neither situation did he see what happened. In neither situation did he apparently take advice from his touchjudges. Pathetic and infuriating. No wonder the game almost boiled over in the second half.