Let's drop the knee jerk reaction stuff saying he should never play for Wigan again etc.

His action cost him his final, cost us the title and will earn him a big ban. End of story move on.

Flower is a very good player, hopefully he learns from this and comes back a better more mature player for Wigan.

Cowardly act, deserves to be nowhere near a rugby field.

Give over, had a few have we? we can all throw a few names around on a forum. I've said it was stupid and cowardly hitting the guy while he was out, chill out.

He hit him 3 times, all cowardly

No excuses

Had this happened in a non televised league game it would hqve been just as bad but we wouldnt hqve this type of reaction

tonight, he has no excuses for what he did but lets not pretend that its the worst thing to ever happen on a rugby pitch

ive seen similar things happen in amateur games that ended up with broken cheek/jaw bones

We all have, but this was a supposed proffessional in the biggest, most important match of the season, not some thug down the park

Flower is a complete idiot and should get a long ban...Some of our new recruits (Bowen--Pettybourne) are complete garbage and should leave the club asap..buying on the cheap has finally caught up.

I have no faith in Wanes signings..Lauaki and pettybourne show him up incredibly.

Doubt we will win anything for a a while now.

Cheapskate Wigan.

Shaun Wane 'we don't need any new signings, we'll go with what we've got in 2014'

Season tickets to drop below 10,000 soon?

Terrible final, full of errors lost ball.

Tonight Shaun Wane got what his tactics deserved

Wigan fans like me got what we didn't deserve.

I agree entirely and i am not defending him at all, he should have the book thrown at him

would we see the same reaction if he played for a different team? Maybe but I doubt it

*yawn*

Wigan head coach Shaun Wane: "This game is special. They show and tell us how much they hate us, and that's the way it is. If we played each other at tiddlywinks there'd be blood."

Rather than yawn Gareth, why don't you pick on the points i am incorrect.

*yawn*

Flower hits Lance off the ball, Lance goes back and hits him, then flower floors him.

Then when out cold he kneels over him and smashes him again.

Flower started and finished it. Hardly Lance using his brain to take one for the team. He reacted to be taken out off the ball, more stupid than clever. He could have ended up giving a penalty to Wigan on our line because flower taking him off the ball was missed by the ref, it was only picked up on the half time report.

Go to bed then ya boring gonzo..

I suspect most players from all teams would have been given a similar reaction. Even a player with an outstanding reputation wouldn't have been excused for this no matter which team they played for - and Flower has been involved in a few bad incidents previously. Other players from other teams with unsavoury reputations would have been given similar treatment - Ryan Bailey comes to mind. Even someone like Kevin Sinfield who has a good record and reputation wasn't seen in a good light when he was sent off this season.

I don't think every team has the same reputation as Wigan either - so maybe you're partly right in that respect, the reaction might have been different had it not been Wigan. You have to take the rough with the smooth in that respect. You've had some success with the style adopted, but you have to be able to take criticism too.

Since Michael Maguire coached Wigan - the Wigan team has played close to the wire and sometimes beyond it! It leaves a bad taste in mouth of other teams when a style is adopted that is aggressive to the point of being questionable and distasteful to some. Shaun Wane has taken this style further with the introduction of a local Wigan-bred mentality in your head coach and has taken that aggressiveness further. His use of language in the build up to matches (particularly against Saints) is over the top in my opinion and not very professional. This obviously riles other sets of supporters and coaching/management teams who will therefore take more pleasure in seeing Wigan lose in such circumstances.

Rant over.

Wow

Flower let himself, the club and the fans down tonight. That will haunt him for a good while longer than the ban imo.

Unacceptable actions.

How much Wane had to play in winding him up pre match only he will know but i suspect he feels partly responsible.

In all fairness to Dave, I think the stall was set out pretty much from the first tackle. It was a tactic advocated by many Saints fans over on their board too, albeit suggesting McIllorum as the target. Fair play to Saints if it was a tactic. It worked. More fool Flower for being stupid enough to fall for it.

If Hohaia was a 17 stone prop and not a halfback he would've broken Flower's jaw.

I wonder if Nathan Brown instructed his team to do something like that.

Have you got an image of the first part of the incident, where Flower has a go at Hohaia following the kick up? Just so we get all the facts straight... I don't excuse Hohaia for this, stupid reaction but there was something to react to and it was started by Flower.

Yeah, how dare they put in a hard, fair tackle straight from kick off. Disgusting tactics that, by Saints and their coach.

How about a follow on of the punch on the floor? a still photo does not tell a story and would not be used in a defence of any incident

Can we have a bit of perspective? For Hoahia to run over and smash Flower with his forearm we should be thinking Flower must've done something pretty bad, oh wait a bit of a coming together and the bigger guy chucks him to the floor. The first punch Hoahia pretty much got what was coming to him based on years of examples of retaliation in scuffles like these. Second punch out of order, which I've not seen ANY wigan fan condone yet in the last five hours!