Terrific game. I see most of this thread is complaining about the refs, and Fev did get a couple of charitable calls from the VR in the first half but good god the directive must have gone to down to Silverwood in the last quarter to make absolutly sure Wigan won it.

We made way too many errors. Without them, Fev wouldn't have been close. Fairplay to fev for digging in and sticking with us though.

chill out guys. i think the only ridiculous decision was sam not tackled in the air. everything else was reasonable, i thought gellings first attempt was a try, but in full speed it did seem raynor grounded it. the fev tries were reasonable. hocks obstruction would not have surprised me had it gone either way, but im not sure anyone truly understands that rule anymore so hell if i know.

What about the ball steal on Finch in the lead-up to Raynor's try?

Well Done Featherstone . I think there should be a few questions asked about the the link between the ref and the video ref , and the refereeing in general

Cracking game, well done. Fev can be very proud of there efforts too.

Poor quality of rugby league, the officials and sky did their best to keep it close ,

Fair play to Fev , played to the whistle and got in our faces , should be proud of your Lads tonight ,

I thought it was a really good game. A few dodgy refereeing decisions but it was how I thought it would go. No way would we ever run up a cricket score on that pitch away from home against a good, tough featherstone team.
Thought we were professional and didn't react to a lot of niggling. Well done feathers tone and well done Wigan.
Charnley take a bow - you really look world class!!

FFS you won . Be happy . If you had lost then every decision would have been wrong .
Lighten up .
You won a very hard-fought contest tonight . Be proud that your team dug deep and held on , and eventually came out on top . Fev fans should be equally proud of their team's performance . They fought hard and ran the current holders of the cup very close.
No need for a post-mortem on this one . The result was as most expected , but not quite as one-sided as it could have been .

I have to say that I thought Fev played a very good game, often better than many of the superleague teams Wigan have played this year. OK Wigan made many mistakes, and I could argue that the ref wasn't best but that would take away from what I thought was a very good Fev performance that they should be proud of.

wigan made errors but at least half of the time it was down to incredible pressure or aggression from featherstone.

Two top class catches by Charnley from kicks to the corner won the game for us tonight, awesome!

Sam. Please take note.

I agree. Their main focus was to get in our face and for most of the game they were rattling us.

Like I said at HT, if we control the ball then we win the game. We dropt a lot of ball tonight but came through in a very very tough game.

My opinion on the 'big' calls:

The first Fev try, Gelling let go of the ball trying to win the penalty. The Fev player gripped the arm as all defenders do when a player drives in like that, but he didn't move to reef it away so the right call imo.

The Hardman try was also a try I think. Yes he had the ball on his head/shoulder but his right hand never left the ball and he still had it on there when the ball was grounded. No seperation at anytime - try.

The obstruction was 50/50 I think. They've runied a brilliant aspect of the game with this rule nowadays but in this instance the Fev player almost gets to Finch having ran around Hock. If Hock isn't there then you would think he gets there quicker and thus shuts the play down. Therefore I can see why the idea that it was obstruction would be in Smith's head, but then again he could quite easily have said that Hock just ran his line and as Finch didn't actually go behind him so it was play on. Tough call.

The Gelling no try could have been a try I guess if you played it frame by frame, but his other two were the right calls. Raynor lucky not to be binned for a professional foul on the kick through.


I thought Silverwood was poor for both sides. He missed Sam tackled in the air, Lockers being dragged by his head, a possible headbutt (he doesn't appear to try and move his legs, just his head?) a number of knock ons, a ball steal that led to a try, and I don't think the penalty that we got on HT was a penalty as I think Micky Mac milked it somewhat.

I know what Wane means when he say's Gelling has a few rough edges.

Charnley was excellent and alongside McIlorum helped us win that match in the final fifteen. McIlorum looked out on his feet for the final twenty yet managed to drag some energy from somewhere and really led us to victory. Mossop I thought was our best prop by a long way, but didn't seem to get a great deal of minutes tonight.

We certainly weren't at our best tonight but that shouldn't detract from courageous Featherstone effort.

It was just one of those nights where the stars very nearly aligned to create a Featherstone win.

Onwards and upwards to next week now. I'd be very surprised were we turn in another performance on par with tonight's.

You know what they say sonny never ask someone to do something you cant do yourself, ask basil and that tool Chase what I mean they will explain it to you...

Oh and well done Wigan

McIlorum was a machine tonight and our best player. He really is developing his game in to a very good hooker. Charnley was also excellent and his late catches of those high balls to the corner made sure we could rest a little easier.

One player I was really suprised to see miss out was Gil Dudson. He's been excellent since he made his debut and I thought he deserved to keep his spot.

Would be in before Eric imo

It was a tough, frustrating but entertaining game tonight, however Silverwood relied too much on the video referee.

Good old fashioned cup tie. Not seen much of Wigan this season and McIlorum seems to have improved ten fold. That Anthiny gelling is though.

Really?

For his 2nd Start i though he performed very well. His finishing was poor but he ran with aggression and vigor. He has got the building blocks to become a very good player. Certainly cant knock his attitude.

I think that Wigan can be proud to have overcome Fev. I dont care that they are lower league team and a bunch of part timers. On the night they put in a performance that would have troubled any team in SL. They did exactly what the needed to do. Get in our faces, slow play down, banjo us in the tackle and score when the opportunity was there.

The niggled us all night and tbh i was a bit surprised that we never matched fire with fire. We seemed more concerned protesting the the ref when we received some ruff stuff in the tackle. We should have dished it out a bit more (especially after the blatant headbutt on Hansen). Are SL players becoming a bit soft compared to the ruff ar$e lower leaguers?

I can knock Wigans performance either tbh. Yes we spilt lots of ball, but when you try to play expansive rugby on a mudbath you will have a high error rate. The one thing that did pee me of however was who everyone stood round watching the ref after Finch was the victim of a 2 on 1 steal. I know that they got him in the end, but that summed up our attitude. We were waiting on Silverwood giving us a decision instead of playing to the whistle.

Overall pretty happy and think it took a hell of an effort of beating Fev last night. They really did themselves proud last night. I dont think we were poor. I just think Fev were outstanding.

For the record Silverwood was reffing two different games at one point. We were reffed at a SL standard, they were reffed at a NL1 standard. As sad as that is it was always going to be like that. Everybody in the game wanted to see the giant slayers beat the champs. Silverwood's smirk after awarding a Fev try showed that.

By the way the Brian Carney is an absolute b3ll 3nd. Some of the "Interpretations" he came up with last night where comical.

Featherstone gave a performance to be proud of,and played the conditions perfectly. They got away with some calls(understatement) but gave Wigan a very very tough game and credit to them.

Credit goes to Wigan as well though as i think the performance from Featherstone,coupled with the conditions, would of accounted for many a Super League team.

Sky's commentary on the game last night though was highly embarrassing topped off with Rod Studd creaming his pants over a 40/20 when the guy had gone well past the 40yrd line.

with a pitch like that I'm not surprised fev gave you a game

Ban him.

Yeah cheers Dave.