No problem with Tomkins at the end. It's an aggressive sport played by hard men. Tomkins felt one if his teammates was under threat and reacted.

The situation that lead to that though however was embarrassing. Smith needs a word with himself.

Here are my thoughts.

1) As has been said on here before, Farrell is an incredibly frustrating player. He's full of errors and ill discipline and generally a lot of stupidity. Funnily enough he then goes and makes a break and scores a try and all seems to be forgotten amongst some of our fans. The fact is that he's stagnating and not really developing and his lack of size is still a concern.

2)Goal kicking is still an issue. Inconsistency the main problem. Smith wasnt awful in this game but he missed the one which appeared easier than the others. Also, when we get penalties we arent making many metres when we kick it into touch. As was said at the fans forum, we may need someone who can kick with distance as well as accuracy.

3) Joe Burgess had a shocker. I really dont see the point in playing him either. He's undoubtedly got a bit of skill but he's hardly excellent and its time Manfredi was given his chance. Burgess should be sent up to Workington for the rest of the season in my opinion.

4) Williams really wasnt as good as others were making out. He had a few nice flick passes but that isnt what will win us games. Its consistently getting the ball to the line which will help us and he seemed reluctant too again. He messed up the chance to tackle Mellor and prevent that try aswell.

5) Matty Bowen. Offered nothing, really poor and even was to slow to outrun some of their props. If Hampshire hadnt have had a shocker of a pre-season hes easily be in this team.

6)Clubb, Bateman and Tautai were all pretty decent. Very impressed with Clubb.

I think you are right.you looked good in chunks tonight and normally would have steam rolled widnes after the sending off.

Still,got a point and the younger guys will have learnt so much more tonight than they would have in a season at lower grade.

Wigan still the team to beat with saints for my money.

I'm confused. I've been getting told all off season that it's easy to beat a team with 12 men? That's apparently the only reason we won the grand final anyway! But the mighty Wigan can't do it.

strange

Tautai getting a fair bit of praise but his unforced error late in the game was critical, he has the odd error in his game so hopefully works on erasing them.

Impressed with Tautai and Bateman..
but the rest
oh dear.......

Yes, there was that one awful pass in the first half from Bateman that broke down a promising attack, but generally he was lively, and did actually look like a centre! And Tautai was busy too.

Matty Smith deserves a game ban just for being a spoilt baby at the end and lashing out. No problem with Joel though, if you look, whenever he gets involved he doesnt throw punches, or even fight for that matter. 9/10 times he just pins them to the ground to diffuse a situation (obviously last night was an error in judgement from him as there was nothing to diffuse).

I thought Tautai, Clubb, Bateman, Joel and Gelling (before he moved to the wing) were OK last night. But i really was not impressed with Burgess and Bowen. Between them they cost us a 3/4 try swing. Burgess bombed easy walk in try and then gave Widnes their first try, and Bowen threw a couple of forward passes at key times.

As for people calling us thugs again, surely it was 6 and half a dozen. Apart from at the end which was Smith's fault, the rest of the niggle throughout the night was fairly mutual (eg. O'Carroll starting it after Mellor fell over on his kick chase). It made us look worse on TV by the Widnes fans calling the referee. Blatant knock on from their player and when we get the scrum the Widnes fans shout 'you don't know what you're doing' cringe



Surely the Ah Van red was the correct decision, accidental or not he attacked the head, and knocked the player out giving him concussion.

Overall it was a very disappointing night, and Child's officiating was laughable at times for both teams. What was he playing at giving a knock on when Gelling got pushed back at the play the ball when we were 1 metre out from their try line. But on the other hand Farrell got away with a couple of high shots that should've been penalties.

As I said though, we definitely didn't deserve to win and in fact for the way Widnes played with only 12 men they probably deserved both points.

Not brilliant by your lot but nothing that Wane can't put right in a week. Discipline and a bit more sharpness and you're up and running. Only a fool would suggest that Wigan hasn't got a team entirely capable of challenging for every trophy. More's the pity

I've waited until this morning to post because I was so angry coming out of the ground last night.

But I'm afraid I still feel the same.

That second half was the most shocking performance of Shaun Wane's tenure. Something is wrong when a man like Matty Smith is kicking out at opponents. The culture needs to be looked at because Wigan have a reputation that will take years to get rid of. We are known as a bunch of thugs throughout the league. The discipline was woeful.

At 16-0 up against 12 men and Kev Brown off the pitch it should have been a rout. Burgess drops a sitter on the line and then another one on halfway and they break away and score. Mellor still had plenty to do and should have been caught. Burgess needs to be dropped. If your winger can't catch the ball I'm afraid he shouldn't be playing. Not good enough. All of a sudden we had a game. We allowed their crowd to get behind them. Shouldn't have happened.

Bateman was excellent at second row early on and it was a shame he had to be moved. He was our best player by miles. I thought Joel did ok, Clubb did ok, Tautai did ok. The rest were awful. The halves gave us nothing although Maty's kicking was pretty good. Lockers was as rusty as hell. Faz had his worst game for Wigan and was a liability. Bowen cost us a try as usual. Logan was better than Powell who was completely anonymous.

I saw this coming in the pre season. The performances at Leigh and Saints were rubbish, but of course, friendlies don't count blah blah - but the signs were there, for anyone who bothered to look.

We now have a massive problem at full back. Bowen costs us a try a game and offers nothing in attack. Hampshire isn't a full back. Maybe Sarge will be the answer, but that creates problems elsewhere.

Positives - Lockers was as rusty as hell, so can only improve. Joel looked much better. Bateman has to be a regular starter, first name in the second row before Faz and Joel. If Joel plays second row then Faz is benched. Manfredi is a decent replacement on the wing. On last night's performance Burgess can go to Sydney now - if they'll have him.

The players are going to have to get used to it, every team now will be trying to wind them all up,discipline is zero!

The players are going to have to get used to it, every team now will be trying to wind them all up,discipline is zero!

Farrell seems to be taking on the mantle of Dudson now, really stupid play to give so many unnecessary penalties. SW keeps complaining about our terrible penalty count, but can’t seem to get the message through to the blokes who keep racking em up. Burgess if your hands are cold mate try blowing on your fingers and rubbing them together a bit, then you might not drop so many vital passes. Nice one to: Gelling, Bateman, Tautai, and Sutton. Pluses for: Williams and L Tomkins. Let’s just be glad that Ah Van doesn’t play for us, well after Smithy’s vicious and brutal kicking episode lol, we could be getting a name for being thugs from scouse-land!

Thought we looked really good for first 20 minutes. Williams played very well at the start, nice to see him looking to break the line. Bateman played very well and Tautai was impressive. The Mellor try was the key to the rot setting in. We were in total control up to that point. Once they scored we became nervous and I could see us throwing it away from that moment on. We lacked composure last night which was shown up by Mattys kick out at the end.
Difficult to go on one game, but I think Bowen should be left out for Rocky, apart from one good claim off a bomb he was poor in defence, to not even attempt to stop that grubber kick isn't good enough. As for his forward pass, a half decent pass there and I think we would have had a game winning try.
Discipline is a big worry for me. Give away soft penalties and you don't win games. What has happened to Farrell?

I watched the game with an old friend of mine from Wigan... he said something along the lines of 'we have the richest history in the country, an apparent endless production line of quality rugby league players, yet we are coaching them to go out and behave like thugs... The name of our great club is being tarnished more and more each season. Something needs to be done before its too late.. if its not already'.

Pretty fair assessment i thought... if it was a team from the bottom of the league playing like this, i suppose you could understand it. But Wigan? It's not good for the club OR the game.

Oh would we all could be as clean as Wire!

I think pointing the finger at others does nothing to address our own problems does it? First you have to acknowledge it. Of course other teams play dirty from time to time, but like it or not Wigan have got a reputation as thugs.

I couldn't believe my eyes at the end. I mean kicking players is rugby's greatest crime. And you might not think it was much, but WHY DO IT? Then the melee caused by Joel. Totally unnecessary.

Wigan have a problem. I'm Shaun Wane's greatest supporter and i'm not going to start slagging him off now, but he's got to sort this out. Farrell needs to be taken in hand.

The bottom line is - We couldn't defend against 12 players who managed to put 22 points on us after being repeatedly given field position by stupid penalties. And it's no good moaning at referees either cause Child gave us a lot more than we deserved last night.

It's time to take a long hard look at things, because last night was shockingly bad. Performance wise and discipline wise.

Too kind with them md!
The another season of no silverware following a defeat in the wcs will eventually see patience running out for Leneghan, perhaps he will then see that Harris's input and advisory position was of a far greater importance to the team than he initial thought.

Shaun Mane is out of his depth and his thuggery tactic hasn't gone unnoticed.

Watching last night and live at Leigh I cant believe Williams is keeping Hampshire out of the 6 shirt - he is simply too slow. Burgess seems distracted and Manfredi should start. You are badly missing a big prop until Flower is back, as I cant see Mossop doing many minutes
What is Farrell playing at? He was borderline at Leigh and again last night - under orders?

Too right pal.
Like I just said it hasn't gone unnoticed. I know that a presenter of a rugby league programme is very aware of it.

We have Tautai and Clubb, both of whom are bigger than Flower/Mossop and Crosby isn't small either.

This isn't an excuse and it certainly isn't proof that we will automatically get better, but people saying Wane is out of his depth or we are going to struggle this season is a bit premature. Out of the last 14 seasons, we have only won 4 opening day games. That is something that needs addressing, but it hasn't hindered us too much in previous years.

But absolutely our discipline needs looking at we give away far too many stupid penalites at key times.
But being more biased for a moment, in what way last night were we more thuggish or dirty than Widnes (other than the silly Smith incident). I mean their winger got sent off for an attack to the head (accidental or not), and the scuffles during the course of the game were caused from both sides, not just us. I think on the one hand, we do have poor discipline, but on the other, people look out for it more now that we have this reputation. People purposely look for things that our players do so they can justify their pre-judgement of our players. /bias

Game should have been wrapped up by half time, bombed chances, stupid penalties 2nd half, every team is going to niggle us just got to play rugby,
Burgess has now put himself under the microscope he needs a big game next week if selected, will be interesting to see how we go at home against Hudds,
Fair play to Widnes 15mins to go thought they would win it, also fair play to their fans really got behind them when they got on a roll, we need to do that at the DW but only seems any atmosphere at the 20,000 games but that's another topic .
As previously mentioned MB's defence needs to improve no excuse this season had a year and full pre season was expecting a big season from him, we will see.

It was awful!
The second half was a shambles. The Wigan thuggery is a bit rich again after last night when it was an opposition winger who smashed a head shot into Charnley. So much so he couldn't return.
Our problem is just plain indiscipline. The niggles, lying on now is ridiculous. What's happened to Liam Farrell I don't know. He could have been penalised out of the game last night, I really don't know how he got away with some of the things he was up to.
Shaun W needs to re-establish his leadership group, then make them lead.
Shaun's got to get a grip of this and soon too with Huddersfield next up at the DW. Our home League record against them is wretched, a big turnaround is needed for next week.
We have more than enough talent, it just need directing properly.

we were boring and normal under noble, poor under millward, technically clever under madge, and now thuggish under wane. it all stems from how the team is coached in my opinion.

its a sport for the hardest of the hard in fairness so the odd blip is understandable and wanes' passion and desire is second to none, but I have always been concerned with him being our coach as he lets his passions spill too much into the players, club, fans, media and the game overall. there needs to be a line that shouldn't be crossed and I don't think wane understands that as he seems to be teaching the players to play like every man they are up against is sean long.