Positives
Joel looks to have lost his union weight.
Budgie has bulked up
Rocky looked like a worldbeater at stand off. Surely this has to be the season he properly gets a decent run in the first team.
Tautai was winning the collision and making ground
Bateman looked really determined and did a great job of getting in Moimoi's face.

Negatives
Rocky (high ball) and Tierney (positioning/speed) both at fault for Leigh tries. We may struggle defensively this season if Bowen's knees go.
Gildart looked out of depth. I thought that in the Academy games v Australia as well truthfully. Hopefully he can bulk up a bit this year.
Tautai gave the ball away at least three times with daft offloads. Limped off the pitch as well, does anyone know if he's alright?
I know the first friendly is basically a fitness exercise but I would have liked to have seen us be a bit smarter in attack and get back into the habit of winning.

I would agree with most of that. But I would add that Logan and Sutton looked to have improved from last year.

However it is very difficult to gauge from friendlies. Leigh weren't at their strongest either, so I thought they did well. Good to see Fuifui - thought we handled him excellently, especially Crosby and Sutton.

I kept getting Sutton and Greenwood mixed up to be honestso couldn't say. Yes we did a very good job on Moimoi, he'll cause Championship teams a lot of trouble next season if they can't afford him that amount of attention. Even if they do he could be a great decoy.

Crosby was excellent as well. Made the hard yards well against a robust Leigh pack. Given that we were missing Mossop, Flower, Clubb and O'loughlin from our first choice pack and had Tomkins in the centres I think the pack is looking very strong for the coming season.

Is the streaming of the games any good? Thinking about paying for the saints friendly as a southern based fan. . . . .

Great facility from Wigan, hats off to them.

Now they have the satellite company for the bandwidth the stream is very good but as a saints fan you might want to watch it in mute mode. The problem in the past has clearly been the bandwidth available at grounds but i think the saints game is a delayed broadcast so I'm not sure how delayed it is.

The Saints game is live, as is the Workington one.
I was at the Leigh game and that was streamed live with the recorded version up for viewing yesterday.

The Saints match is Live on Wigan TV using the same satellite broadcasting as at Leigh. Only difference this week is they'll be taking our wish fm commentary feed in which me and Joe will be joined by the Wish FM Saints commentary team of Chris Price and Mike Bennett as well, so for the Saints fan asking, the commentary will be quite neutral.

Streaming of the Leigh game was v. good. I only signed up prior to the Leigh match and was pleasantly surprised after reading mixed reviews of the streaming on various forums. Guess it also depends on your internet connection and computer. I believe there are problems with iPad though.

Thanks Bilko

Subscribed this weekend & got to say fab picture quality, for anyone with a Chromecast the 'Video and TV Cast' app is brilliant, seamlessly streams your choice of vid to a big TV, Leigh game had a comparable pic quality to Premier Sports. Let's see what it's like for a live broadcast........

Is the full derby game on Wigan TV? I've been waiting for Saints to upload the highlights as I couldn't make it but none are forthcoming so far! I'm thinking about doing the unthinkable and giving 5 of my St Helens pounds to the Wigan club but just wanted to check exactly what I would get first!

Yes the full 80mins with commentary is on Wigan TV.

Great, thanks for that!

As an RL fan in general there are some other things that you will probably find interesting on there. The first part of the fans forum (Lenagan & Radlinski and the £475K loss in 2014) Mark Bitcon on the fitness testing etc.

24 - 6


WTF ?!
I know it was the creche out there this aft, but come on !

Good job Town didn't have their full team out either....

Does that club partnership thing work both ways?

It was a mirror image of the Leigh and Saints games, particularly in the first half. Error - penalty - error - penalty etc. Wigan actually defended well because they had very little ball and Workington were well worth their win. On the plus side Sam Powell had a good 40 minutes, made a couple of breaks one of which led to a disallowed try (1 of 3) but it was a very disjointed, scrappy performance and as in the other two games the timing was miles off.

Makes u think what have they actually been doing in the pre season training

Let battle commence on Thursday , will Wigan beat the Mutants?

Men against boys it may have been, but there was little to cheer there apart from Powell, and Greenwood did a few good things too.

I thought Manfredi went well despite not getting much decent service.

Sounds good I'll give it a watch. I'll be especially interesting in what Bitcon has to say as fitness is something I take quite seriously!

Finally bit the bullet and subscribed, I hope Saints produce something similar.

Best ice cream in Leigh.