Agree with your comments on Bibby he was slated by a few before the season’s start. For me he stays in the team until others force him out by performing better in 2021

Bibby, Hardaker and Powell were great.
Everyone else was below average.

I’m surprised no one is hammering some players like they would if it was Tony Clubb.

E.g.
Partington - barely 40m with the ball and 9 missed tackles.
Bullock, Singleton - barely 40m and under 5m per carry.

How can a prop not make over 5m per carry?? The defence is 10m away ffs.

I like partingtons aggression but he let himself down last night, he kept going in for the big hit and missing, ie the 9 missed tackles. Can’t do that against a better team.

I like Partington’s aggression but I am asking myself what does he and Smithies actually bring to the table other than an over egged ego and the need to look like the hardest mon on the pitch? Everyone loves the big hit but he’s constantly looking for it and more often than not making himself look the chum. If he concentrated on taking that misplaced aggression out in his offense and when he takes a ball in he’d be a far better player IMO. As for Smithies I just don’t know what he does to warrant a place in the side at the moment. He has bags and bags of potential but he seems content on trying to rough players up. Much like Partington; if he channelled that properly he’d be a far better player but that tutelage comes down ultimately to the coach. Lam seems happy for these two to carry on so I don’t expect it to change anytime soon.

The OP is correct on metres from the props but they have all been slated for how poor they were so I don’t understand the Clubb link. I’d rather Bullock/Singo in the squad than Clubb in any case.

The difference is, that was a poor performance by those players whereas stats like that are the norm for Clubb.

Is that the first time a fit Clubb hasn’t been selected by Lam? The only way to get more out of him is to make him earn a shirt instead of getting selected based on ten minutes worth of nothing. I’ve stuck up for Clubb at times but I’ve never seen a prop who looks as happy to leave the tough work to others if he can get away with it.

Yeah I think so. Flower, Bullock, Clark and G.Burgess went through periods of being available and not selected but I don't think Clubb has till now.

Didn't see the Salford friendly but plenty on here seemed to think Clark was one of our better props, no sign of him yesterday.
I know he's inconsistent but he can bring some oomph to the pack if he's on form.
You'd hope he'd be busting a gut in training as his future seems to be on the line.

Farrell was fantastic last night, typical Farrell
30mins or so in I wouldn't have been surprised if he had more carries and metres than the rest of the pack together.
And ethan havards 46 tackles and 130ish metres from 16 carries was very good (I agree with jonh that we need to find out if he's ever going to be an enforcer, but even if not and he isn't nesh than progression of his stats like that will.do for me).
Tony clubb would have to play 6 games to get those stats !!!!

As for Partington
Agree that his aggression sometimes created problems for ourselves, but it was at a time when we were being bossed in the forwards he stepped up and had a real go, e needed someone to try and lifts us, that'll do for me.

Not sure how much you can really read into the stats. It's the first game of the season. Maybe it's worth waiting for another game or 3 before deciding our entire pack is awful and all needs replacing. After all, we finished top and reached the Grand Final last season. They can't be that bad.

As someone who looks at the stats after every game you can only really get a picture of where someone's performances are at after they've played a few games. There are always anomalies. Every team has games where several of their forwards record a low amount of metres made, or have an exceptionally high number of missed tackles.

Powell flew under the radar, 65 tackles.

Good point about stats, some people seem to live by them but they certainly don’t tell you everything.

I think this could be a result where we look back and realise it was a better win than we realised, let’s see how Leigh go from here, would you be surprised if they turned over some of the top teams this season? I wouldn’t and I thought they were outstanding in that first half.

I was content with the points all things considered but lots of room for improvement so let’s hope we learn from it.

The other issue is that we need our back three to make good metres and put us on the front foot.

I do not think that all of our pack needs replacing, most of them are capable of doing exactly what is required of them. But we got to the Grand Final last year despite the glaring weaknesses not because of them. We covered over our lack of forward meter makers through dogged determination and a back line that could get us out of trouble. The same issues are still there that we tried to address by buying Burgess. Individually our forwards are fine but together they do not have the makings of winners. It is a bit like trying to paint but only having shades of red available.

One metre eating prop changes the whole feel of that front row for me. A big, raw boned, experienced body who can make ground from their own line would bring such a nice balance. You then have Singleton and Partington who bring aggression and a real combative nature, Bullock who can knock holes in teams when he’s on and Havard who is statistically superb but still very young and could just do with one more experienced prop to play on the back of.

I think we’re closer to having a top level front row then we’ve been for a long time but the gap without that one we need is so glaring. Not that we have a sniff of getting him but we’ve spoke about Liam Watts many times. Just as an example, you put him in this side and the perspective on the rest is so different. Singleton and Partington can just do their thing as we have a player smashing the metres out, Havard and Bullock can play on the back of that as well and have an easier job because opposition teams defences are being challenged more by a player like that.

If there was even a sniff of signing Watts we ought to be throwing the kitchen sink at him to sign him. Unlikely as you say but with Powell leaving you just never know.

We’ve mentioned his name time and again but sadly the ship sailed when Wane wanted to get him from Hull. In terms of what we’ve missed the last couple of years and what we need going forward, they both wouldn’t have been or continue to be an issue had we got him. The whole George Burgess mess probably wouldn’t have happened as well and the club would’ve saved a fortune in the process.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing I suppose.

Why are we incapable of signing the right type of prop? Are we unlucky or is it down to someone not doing their homework?

It seems to be an on-going issue with Wigan - I am struggling to think of any prop signings who have been top drawer (GB might have been an exception if he had been fit but that is another story) in recent times - we seem to have a blind spot in signing props - Lima is the last one I can think of who was really good (I think of the likes of Flower as decent but not in the top bracket).

Certainly in recent years we have a well below average track record, some of the prop signings have been really poor., you have top go back a long way for Wigan to consistently sign top class props- for some reason we have a much better record of signing players in other positions, it is very strange.

When we had Taylor, Flower, Dudson and Mossop was probably the last time we had a set of bog props and we won the double



I think it must have been a policy under Wane to have smaller props no other explanation for it really, The way we played suggest it too.

Since he's left we've signed Bullock and Burgess so seems like we are at least looking for big metre makers now.

Not throwing the baby out with the bathwater but hope we see a better performance this week.

We have a real blind spot when it comes to props. I did a post a couple of years back saying that we don't sign, or produce any props of note. Now that's changed slightly with the progression of Sutton in the NRL and hopefully Havard coming onto the scene ​too.

Like you said however, in the last 20 years you can probably name 2, or 3 top draw Wigan players for every position apart from prop.

I think that if Watts leaves Castleford then he will follow Powell to Warrington

Because the type of prop people want are few and far between, who fits the bill of what we need? Not very many, and the ones available are probably zero.
If Luke Thompson becomes available we should try and move heaven and earth for him and use the Marquee spot.

Some SL props that (IMO) would improve our go-forward:
- Mike Cooper
- Robbie Mulhern
- Mikolaj Oledzki
- Ligi Sao
- Sebastine Ikahihifo

That's kind of what I'm trying to say. We got cap space available late in the season (or maybe early in the off season). That doesn't leave a lot of time to try and attract one of the few available top props in the sport when you have two of your best players about to on the fence whether to stay or not.

Next year I'd expect Leuluai, French and/or Hastings to leave and be replaced internally by Field/Smith and maybe one marquee halfback signing. That should leave cap space for a top prop, with months to identify and negotiate with the right man. I hope we don't use up a marquee spot on a prop. Those spots should be reserved for the spine unless we can get a real superstar IMO.