And just what difference would that make? If it had been at the Reebok there would still have been 24000 fans supporting Wigan and a handful supporting St. George just as there would be for any British club on any British ground.

There is no such think as a neutral ground if the tie is to be played in England or if it were played in Oz. Don't forget Wigan beat Brisbane to win a WCC in front of 46,000 Aussies so at least we have in the past agreed to play over there but which ever country the game is played in, England or OZ, there is no neutral ground. It's just like Internationals. Any UK ground is not neutral for an Aussie side.

Cracking effort from Wigan last night.

Just edged out by a top class Dragons outfit and I can't think of one player who had a bad game.

Excellent considering we were without Richards, Finch, Fielden and Lima as well as losing Gleeson.

If we play like that this season we will be hard to stop. Wouldn't be surprised to see a rematch next year to be honest.

Totally agree, no many sides could compete at that level if you remove their top two props and the man of steel/top try scorer

I think the point made earlier about gleeson not being fit were correct, once that was rectified the only try they scored was a soft short range one, they should probably of done that substitution earlier

It obviously is for you



BTW where did Wigan play

at some of these niggling troll posts trying to make capital out of a very young, injury-riddled Wigan said going down heroically to the best team on Earth.

"The Aussies won at a canter" (even though, in actual fact, they didn't)."The Aussies had to come a long way." "The Aussies had to play in front of a hostile crowd." "The Aussies would have beaten you by more if you'd played them later in the season." "The Aussie had to put up with you lot calling for penalties." "The Aussies hadn't had any warm-up matches."

Boohoo. Get the violins out.

I came off that ground last night as proud as punch for our lads. They matched it toe-to-toe with a very fine team for the best part of 80 minutes. We all know you can't give opposition of that quality an inch; Wigan did a couple of times, and they paid the price. But they made plenty chances of their own, and could still have taken it in the last few minutes. Only absolute top-drawer defence held Wigan out.

And I'll never again listen to any crap from any Aussie fan or Aussie apologist Brit about why the Aussies don't take this game seriously. You only had to see Steve Price and his boys last night to know that they were taking this one very seriously indeed.

All you whingers who are trying to find crumbs of comfort in a Wigan defeat - man up! At some point your own team may be there, but first you'll have to get past us. All you other guys who are crediting Wigan for giving it their best shot - well done, it's much appreciated. The WCC is too big an event for parochial attitudes. It's about their best vs our best, and for the last few years it's now been shown that, domestically at least, the gulf between us is not that big. That should be something for us all to celebrate.

Couldn't put it any better myself.

It will be interesting to see whether you do. The early stages of Leeds' recent seasons have been disrupted by this fixture.

Why would that have any bearing on Wigan?

Gleeson should never have played IMO, could see before game he wasn't right. stupid choice I think as 1) Wasted another forward interchange when we lacked forwards cos Joel had to move out to centre and 2) Contributed to the poor defending on our right hand edge. Charnley would have been better option as fully fit and pace to get him out of trouble if positioning wasn't perfect.

No reason for us to be downbeat after that performance - we have real world class quality to come into the side from injury or suspension, e.g.:

Richards
Lima
Finch
Hock

Gleeson clearly wasn't fit and Roberts is still finding his way back from injury.

How many sides could lose/have unavailable that level of world class talent and still push a virtually full strength St George all the way? They are the best Aussie club side and favourites for the NRL this season.

Because like Leeds did when they were the Champions we have played an extra, extremely tough, game at the start of the season.

Coupled with the fact that we had to play an EXTRA game vs Saints in the opening round and I'd be surprised if there isn't some knock on effect later on in the season. We'll be stretching the depth of the team sooner rather than later.

They were the best team imo and deserved to win but that was a cracking effort from the lads considering the players we had out:-
Lima - World champion
Finch - World champion
Richards - Man of steel
Fielden - One of best props in super league
Gleeson off injured too.
Theres probably 4 out of our 5 top earners there.

Even with all the above we still had chances to win it. If Goulding catches that ball it was a possible try and it would of stopped their try, If Sam wasnt taken out when he flicked it through he would of scored for certain imo, if we hadnt thrown passes to fans instead of players on a couple of occasions there were half chances there.

That sliding road block that SGI have is fooking unbelievable! Ive never seen a defence that good in my life.

We dont need to make excuses after last night, we did Wigan and our country proud. Any other team in super league with the same calibre of players missing that we had would of got completley embarrassed which is testament to the some of the young players coming through our system who are going to be big, big stars in the future. The SGI captain payed us a massive complement on his interview after saying we would win a lot of games in the NRL.

The future is bright for us and it will take a very good team to stop us this year.

As others have said i'm very proud of the boys tonight. We were up against it with a weakened front row but we stood up to the challenge and we can hold our heads up high. Guys like Mossop, Sam, Prescott, Mcilorum, Joel and Faz are still not anywhere near the players they will become and I’m excited for the future.

As far as the game goes the two biggest losses for us were Pat and either one of Lima or Fielden. It goes without saying that Pat is the best winger in SL and I very much doubt Morris would have found it as easy going as what he did last night if Pat would have been out there. As for the props if either one of Fielden or Lima would have been out there supporting the excellent work Coley and Prescott did then we really could have bullied them up front.

It wasn’t to be and the better side, with the better players won.

But everyone else has played an extra game too. Using that as an excuse will find little sympathy from other fans.

To be honest, I wouldn't worry too much about this.

If Leeds fans are saying that playing one extra game, albeit a tough one, was the reason why they failed to win anything last season, I'd take that with a pinch of salt. There were clearly other issues at Headingley, not least problems between the coach and the management.

While I agree that the WCC is a demanding extra fixture, our coaching staff are surely professional enough to plan around it, particularly where mental strength issues are concerned. I feel our squad depth will be tested earlier rather than later because, for the first time in several years, we suddenly have an injury crisis to deal with.

But it will be interesting to see how we cope on Friday. Last year we gave masterclasses in how to kick back from defeat, but this week we've got the minimum recovery time, plus Maguire can't exactly go in and bollock the lads senseless because that was a pretty good all-round effort. He'll now have to find a different way to get them back on their feet.

Well said. We were second best on the night and had we won it (which we could have done) it would have been on a par with the WCC in Brisbane when we were also players short.

I think the lads will be very disappointed because they will know with a bit of luck (e.g. Goulding catching that ball) they could have actually won the game. If you get soundly beaten then yes its disappointing but I think when you just come up just short its frustrating as well as disappointing so they will be kicking themselves not thinking they were never in it.

The fact a pack with players like Farrell, Mossop and Tuson in it had SGI having to take players out at the end to prevent a score shows how close we came to snatching it.

What DaveO said - without one or two handling errors we could have won the game. It was a fantastic specacle to watch (especially as I was in attendance at Crusaders v Bradford on Saturday - the difference in quality was staggering!) and for a neutral or newcomer to the game would have been brilliant. It wasn't to be but every credit to the team and especially to our young forwards, we really matched them up the middle. A bit of grunt from Lima and/or Fielden could have made the difference but no excuses, SGI were simply superb (after the first quarter...).

I wouldn't say that; we had an injury crisis last year, but nobody noticed.

St Georege took the chances they had. We didn't. That was the difference

We lost Roberts for most of the season, and though he was a key player, he was only one man. We're now lacking two key players in Finch and Richards for a prolonged period, and we don't know how long it will be before Fielden and Gleeson return.

I should revise what I said before. I don't think it's exactly an 'injury crisis'. But Finch and Richards are two guys who would make a big difference to any team. If the other two are off for a sustained period as well, I reckon we'll find it harder than we did last year.

I think the point Geoff was making was that around the time we went to Leeds away we had around 7 players out injured and that tested the squad as much as it's testing now.

Roberts/Phelps/Prescott/Mickey Mac/O'C/Bailey/Mossop were all 1st team/1st choicce players in and around rounds 1-4 yet by this part of the season they'd all missed/been missing 6 weeks + each and you can add Hansen who was only coming back into the team after 2 month + missing.

This pushed the move to FB for Sam, the inclusion fo Goulding as a Winger & the development of Tuson/Farrell etc further on and quicker than maybe would have happened with a cleaner bill of health?

I find it amazing that we so easily find things to devalue an excellent game;

They had to fly round the world, the weather is different etc. If we had flown to aus and were beaten by the same score it 's because we were not as good - anything else is just excuses.

The St George team are extremely well coached and have an amazing defence (as anyone who saw any of the NRL last season would testify). They also have an amazing backline. Morris, Cooper, Gasnier, would replace the top 3 backs in any SL side.

Credit to wigan that they

a) kept them to within a score
b) put them under a great deal of pressure in the 2nd half - we were a bad pass and a dropped ball away from making things very very interesting.

It was pretty unfortunate that gleeson dropped the ball in our own 20 to give them position for their 1st score.

The only really disapointing thing from a wigan perspective was our defence on gleeson/gouldings wing - goulding always looked well out of position - not sure if that's where he's been told to play or whether he just got sucked in?

Hansen, McIlorum, Mossop & Deacon missed a lot of games too (as well as "fringe" players like O'Carroll, Phelps, Bailey). I remember games when we had 6 or 7 regulars out at the same time - but as I said, nobody really noticed because of the depth we have.

I think we only had Sam & Joel (and almost Pat) who played every game.

Thought it was a cracking game of rugby to be honest and the best team won on the day. Any penalty or knock on from us was punished by a world class outfit but I felt we played really well and if we keep that standard up for the rest year and we'll be hard to beat.

Wigan would have won if Gleeson had of stayed on the park. Joel Tomkins got murdered playing at centre. Didn't think St George were all that tbh, was more impressed by Melbourne in recent years.

Our right edge defence tightened up after Gleeson went off imo. Tomkins pulled off two superb last ditch defensive efforts which kept us in it. To say St George werent all that is completely unjustified, they would have nilled most SL sides with that defensive effort, whilst drilling 50 points in to them.