It's to early to write Matty Bowen off yet but he's been poor in the games I've seen him this season which might be him settling into the Wigan structure.

He's not timing that loop around the back correct that Sam tomkins had down to a fine art. IMO that's wigans biggest attacking weapon (especially against saints. It rips us to shreds). If he can't get that right, I feel you might struggle a little with those charnley walk ins.

My biggest worry at Bowen, if I was a Wigan fan, is the fact he doesn't look interested at all or bothered.

I’m not looking for any scapegoats now because one wet fart doesn’t mean you’ve got diarrhoea, I’ll hold off for a few more games yet. But it strikes me there’s a lot of visiting greenhouse dwellers throwing stones today that is when they’re not choking on all those sour grapes they’ve been eating.

It's a open forum isn't it? Wigan just took part in the WCC didn't they? Nobody else played this morning so it's rugby league hottest topic at moment isn't it?

Would you like posters from other forums to come on and say you deserved to win and that you was the better team?


For what it's worth, I thought Wigan hung in there very well after going down to 18-0 so early. I thought young burgess showed he looks like he's going to be a future star. I thought Sean o'loughlin was top class.

You have a very short memory. That drop of ball to the winger was something Sam and Wigan did regularly last year. The aim is to get the bigger player (winger) to take the ball in the the defense and get a quick play the ball. It's generally done if the defenders are around 10 metres from the fullback.

A fatter wallet ?

Well I thought Goulding was poor today and Thornley and Gelling should be challenging his position rather than Sarginsons

My words were not aimed at your post which I thought quite balanced; it was meant more at the idiots who were just waiting to come on here not just talking about a scapegoat, but have more of a scapegloat. Please come as often as you like these boards as you say are an open forum you can speak your mind and welcome. I do! And I don’t even want to stop all the idiots, but like you I just would like to have my say too.

That's what I've noticed in the short time he's been here. His whole body language is poles apart from the young players chomping at the bit coming up through the ranks. Mistakes happen, fans can forgive that.....lack of effort? I'm not so sure!

At best, he needs to pull his weight (and shed a bit by the looks of it), at worst...well let's not go there!

Possibly just getting used to weather, conditions and settling in.

I remember people getting on Jamie Lyons back when he first came.

sorry if that was aimed at me bout gloating if you look back through the posts you will see that I wasn't gloating at all till I got poked I was making a valid point about a player that seems to be crocked
I was actually praising your youngsters and I believe Hampshire would have put in a lot better showing than Bowen who defiantly seems to have been eating too many pies

You hit the nail on the head - 'he just doesn't look interested'. Another clapped out Aussie over here for the easy money.

I'm fully aware of that. I'm afraid that Bowen is nowhere near justifying his reputation. In a game like today he should have been setting a LEADING example. Haven't we been told what a great player we've signed? I'm not interested in excuses like he needs to learn the structures and he doesn't like the weather and other such nonsense. In a game when others ran their bood to water for the cause he looked like he couldn't be bothered. How do you excuse not jumping for the ball? In SAMs worst games he ALWAYS did something in attack. So far Bowen has done the square root of naff all.

I wouldn't criticise a younger player in this manner. It's just that this guy is supposed to be one of the best full backs in the world.

An up and down game from Bowen - but not the only player in that category (but he does give me the distinct impression of someone who does not look wholly certain he has made the right decision or had the right decision forced on him - I wouldn't be surprised to see him leave before the season ends).

Give the lad a chance to play into form. Top quality doesn't just go away over a few weeks of off season.

Didn't Mr Lenegan say he was a marquee signing? At least it helped smooth over the Tomkins transfer a bit at the time.

It did. But I can't help thinking we got the wrong Bowen. "Here's who you could have signed!!!"

We certainly didn't get the speedboat!

I've been less than impressed with Bowen so far. In pre-season I was one of the ones saying to just give him a chance etc and looking at his highlights on YouTube, but the more I see him the more I think he's just completely overweight and unfit. He appears to have either lost the motivation to play well as in his mind he's only here for a short spell to see out his career, or has just lost the ability with his age and physique.

I'm not sure we need a scapegoat really? We were very well beaten by a clearly better side on the day. Their forwards battered us up the middle and our own errors and missed tackles cost us badly. Most Wigan players put a reasonable shift in.
Jamie Peacock hit the nail on the head for me when he talked about salary cap restricting SL because as he said, the most elite athletes will continue to go where the money is.
Yes I'm disappointed we didn't win but we can be proud of our great club.

The first 20 minutes killed us, giving a team like that a 18 - 0 start was never likely to lead to anything other than a defeat - we were playing frantic catch up from then.

I actually think that for the last 15 mins of the first half and a large part of the second half we were competitive - some of the errors late on were due to a mix of trying too hard and fatigue.

Some positives from the game and a few negatives - but there is certainly room for some improvement in the team - defensively we looked lost at first, very vulnerable to busts up the middle and short off-loads (something we struggled with against Hudds as well).

How do you know he is being defiantly overweight? Is he eating pies in front of Wane at training or something?

I agree we were the better team for 20 minutes in the second half but left way too much to do against a great side. Individual errors for tries killed us in the end. We did look soft up the middle when they got a roll going but for 60 minutes of that game we gave as good as we got.

Super League and the NRL are the same as the Championship and Premiership. If you make an error against an NRL side you will get punished and we did every-time. In Super League we can make errors and get away with it. Same in football.

By the looks of him, The finest selection of wigan delicacies this side of the northern hemisphere