Completely agree with that.

Noble was very good at getting us to Semi Finals and IL made it clear that just getting to the SF wasn't good enough for Wigan.

We didn't learn our lesson from the first Leeds SF this year, let's hope the reminder they served us will hammer home the point for 2013.

IL might share that view. I don't think he is daft and so I think he will have his own ideas as to what Wane must do to meet his expectations given the differences in playing staff. I am pretty certain Wane didn't meet them in 2012.

My guess is the raw statistics won't interest IL so much. By this I mean on paper getting to a GF semi final again might seem a good thing but there is a difference between a side that is going into one with a lot of form with the expectation of a win not being unreasonable compared to one that gets there when no one expects them to go further.

If the team plays well and looks well organised and tactically sound but gets beat in a close semi-final Wane may survive that. If it lurches into the semi looking shattered and Wane does something stupid again like playing Murphy getting to the semi won't count for much at all IMO.

I think Wane would have done a lot better if he had given Murphy and Powell game time early in the year when we were beating all and sundry in the league. That way we would have been more prepared for Leuluai and Tomkins' injuries, and McIlorum's ban. This year I would say the same two players again, plus maybe Logan Tomkins, need to be ready to step into the first team, because they're only one injury from a call up unless we want to be forced down the route of putting Richards at 1 (with Gelling or Thornley at 5) or Lockers at 6/9.

Whilst there may be some truth in that, we should also acknowledge that:

Wane has been the far more open to give youngsters game time that his immediate predecessors

Wane got his fingers burnt on 2 occasions when we lost games we should have won, by fielding a weakened side (admittedly against the Bulls most changes were forced rather than optional)

Overall, Wane handled the blooding of youngsters pretty well. However, if we had won the away game at Widnes I am sure that Tomkins, Murphy and Powell would have had more opportunities. The backlash following that defeat forced him into a more conservative approach.

Wane did well at blooding props and second rowers, not that we had any real development need there but when you look at the other positions it's a sad story

Full back
Russell - despite being outstanding in pre-season he got 1 game in position and 1 game on the wing before we sent him off to Hull. We didn't even use him when Sam got injured. He's left now

Murphy - 1 game then thrown in at the deep end in the semi final

Wing
King - 1 game, despite Richards being injured most of the season

Centre
Hughes - Fair play he had plenty game time at centre but I'm hardly alone in thinking that he's a second rower playing out of position. Time will tell on this but I think he would have been smarter giving Gelling or Thornley some game time at centre

Gelling - Still never played centre, despite Carmont missing loads of games through injury and us knowing he was likely to leave at the end of the year. He got game time on the wing where he was pretty poor but we didn't sign him as a winger

Thornley - See Gelling

Half backs
Powell - 1 game despite Leuluai missing loads of games through injury and McIlorum's ban (Smith could have played 9)

Mellor - 3 games then sent out on loan. Didn't get any games when Leuluai got injured or when McIlorum was banned. He's left now

Hooker
Logan Tomkins - I didn't realise until I looked into it that he actually got 9 games! (3 starts and 6 off the bench). Fair play to Wane on that one, it doesn't speak much for Logan though that he didn't come into the reckoning when McIlorum got banned

Last year we only had one first team friendly and went in to the Hudds game very underdone, played poorly and lost.
This year we have Leigh on the 6th Jan, HKR on 13th and Wire the 26th.
Whether we are to have one on the weekend of 19/20th I don't know but those three with the Wire game a week prior to the season start is far better than last year.
Looks like that's one thing SW could have done better last year which he is improving for next season. Lesson learned perhaps?

Maybe.

But just hope that none of our players get injured in any of those matches.

Otherwise, you'll have the same people who last season were whining that we were under-prepared, slating Wane for taking too many risks by playing in "meaningless friendlies".

Basically, our coach is screwed either way when it comes to dealing with people like that.
They will always find some stick or other to beat him with, then claim that they "knew this would happen" all along.

Wane can't win

He fields a young side and the lads are defeated! He gets a load of flak for fielding too many youngsters!

We get beat in the playoffs and everybody says we need to rotate the squad more!

Some of you guys could see the negative in a worldwide cure for a worldwide problem.........!

Wane did a cracking job last year, I for 1 wish him the best for next year!

Defeated before we start.................

Here here!!

We played better rugby than anybody for more games than anybody and the handful of games we lost were by narrow margins. I know people will say we lost when it mattered but it was by the skin of a worms tooth both semi finals.

I can't wait for 6 Jan and for the whole season to unfold.

At last, a bit of positivity.
Roll on 6th January.

I'm sure we had 3 pre-season games last year as well FT (its somewhere on cherryandwhite, but wasnt it Wire, Leigh and Salford ???)
However, we only chose to play a 1st XIII in one of them, so mis-used the opportunity to get everyone up and running for the Giants opener.

The lesson will only have been learned if we either :

play the main squad and get them ready with a few key back-up players get a decent run

OR

play more of the youngsters, but ensure that if they play well, they get into the team for the start of the season

Last season we did neither. However, we did win the hub-cap, so not all bad



SW had an excellent season, but I'm sure that he will admit to 2 main failings. Losing the pressure games through in-discipline (MM, GH principal offenders here), and not blooding the young backs as efficiently as he did the forwards.

There was definitely a trip to HKR away as a friendly last year, as well.

There was.

Absolutely freezing.

SW's team were top of the league which is excellent in his first season as head coach.
No matter who or where you are, if you have been an assistant and then appointed head, after the first year you look at the things that have been done well and also those that could have been done better.
SW I'm sure was no different.
I thought the Salford game was the only one where he played his best 17 that were fit. Wasn't Leigh the U20s? Hudds Lockers test game where all 1st teamers were off the field after 10 mins or so? HKR much the same.
We may have players who cop a knock but that's the risk with trial games. Often we go with 20 players for a friendly too.
Fixtures out, squad announced and season tickets bought, can't wait!

There's some ridiculous criticism of Shaun Wane on this forum, the team did played fantastically in the league last season and gave within a whisker of getting to both finals, if Wane would have decided to make the team take it easy for most of the season it does mean we would have beaten Leeds in both semi's. It's not really up to us fans to tell him how to coach the team , who knows how the 2013 season will pan out? Seems some people just get really bored and spout rubbish during the off season.

I really wish people would stop mentioning it was Wane's first season as if that means any mistakes were excusable because he was some kind of rookie. He has been in coaching for years and had two years to learn of Madge who even though [ihe[/i was was rookie won a GF in [ihis[/i first season. The effect he had on the team was plain to see. If Wane has learned anything from 2012 it ought to be he didn't know better than the previous coach.

I think that at Wigan as with any other of the big clubs in Super League criticism will always come with a season that does not deliver a major trophy.

Having said that I think that even if you do win major trophies like Mike Maguire then you will still get criticism.

What has perhaps not helped Wane was his pre-season comments that he made regarding the previous coach who proved to be a revelation at Wigan following the Noble era.

The cold hard fact is that whilst Wane has done very well in 2012 he also made some basic mistakes that can not be attributed to the players on the field, his basic decision making in the most important game of the season being one example.

Wane is correct in wanting to win every game but he needs to back that up with his actions and decisions as the head coach, and some of the criticism is warranted.

I find it amusing to see that some peoples reaction to us failing to peak at the correct times of the season is to ensure we have more warm up friendlies before the start of SL.

I thought the same but felt I might get slated for commenting on here .
Next season should be fun with all the top teams taking it easy until August when they all want to finish 5th and win the GF.
We could see the top four looking like Hull, HKR, Bulls and London

So basically, we have to win every game, by a lot of points, and keep plenty of clean sheets, get the new lads playing well immediately, blood more youngsters, not give away any penalties or get players banned, and win the hub cap, the GF and the CC, or Wane gets the boot?



=#FF0000[size=200WANE OUT!![/size

Yeah!
Also if he replaces an injured player by moving another established player out of position in a semi final rather than playing one of the young lads (Leeds CC semi) and we lose then that's STUPID and not good enough. However if we replace an injured player with a young lad rather than switching an established player out of position (Leeds playoffs semi) and still lose then that's also STUPID and not good enough!

SORT IT OUT WANE!

Yes we lost the semi final against Leeds IMHO we should have moved Richards to full back and brought in Thornley or Gelling on to the wing .Jack Murphy did not disgrace himself all that much Ive seen our golden boy Tomkins miss kicks like that but hey who knows what would have happened if Richards was at full back that night would we have been in the GF ?? .

whats to say gelling or thornley, wouldnt have made a similar mistake though. but this is all hypothetical i guess.

You cannot compare last season to the Brian Noble era, that is completely unfair on Wane. Under Noble players were getting worse, and we got beaten by poor sides on a regular basis. Okay we only got to a semi final last season, but in a broader sense the club is heading in the right direction. It would have been an absolute tragedy for RL and Wigan if we had won a Super League under Noble, because we wouldn't have deserved it (just like leeds this year). Secondly by 2009 Noble had 3 and a half years at wigan, and nearly a decade as a coach. This is wanes first season, so we have to give him the chance to see out his contract, and im sure IL will!!!

Beating first, second & fourth placed teams in consecutive weeks, 2 of them away, says different.