leave cru reserves alone. thats the breeding ground for the charge into mid table for next year !

on a more serious note. it is sad when a great player falls so low.
the best we can hope is that a reinforced front row next season will take the pressure of him, and he can rebuild his career.

unless he wants to release himself from the contract, hes here for next season. in the past hes looked like a genuine pro, who is confused about his lack of form. one last hurrah to earn a final deal back over the pennines ? i hope he can come back.

i would notlike to think of him retiring with this level ofperformance as something to remember him by.

personally, come october i would tell him bugger off for 2 months. get his head in order, then come back training hard for a final fling, and a chance to resurrect his career.

He's good defender (and he does get through a ton in defence) but that's all now, and it's not good enough for a super league prop. I hope he returns to some kind of form but I seriously doubt whether it will be with us. What frustrates me more is that he's been so bad for so long, and yet he's never been dropped.

I think it could be that he is getting stale under the same manager. he has been with nobby for most of his career. i think with a change of coach/team he will regain some of his form.

i also feel sorry for him. i was sure that he would shut the doubters up during this season, and he aint anywere near doing that.

to be fair to him he has been honest in his approach and whilst talking about his performances. he has never (IIRC) blamed anyone but himself for it.

He will be known as a SL great, just not from his time at Wigan. IMO hes not the same size as he was at Bradford, hes looked like he was going to explode at any moment at Bradford but now he looks nothing more than most 2nd rowers in the league.

Does anyone else think he should have a spell in the academy? I know it's a risk playing a young lad (Mossop) or a second rower (Hansen) at prop but I'd put money on them doing a better job of it than him. Plus that leaves Fielden with no pressure on his shoulders, playing as a big fish in a small pond. If that happens maybe he'll get back some form and be useful in September/October. The idea of Fielden lining up against Morley and Westwood in a couple of weeks scares me to be honest, and could lose us momentum when it matters.

I second what most of ypu have already said. I too feel alot of sympaty towards Fielden, it's obvious he is trying but for whatever reason it just doesn't work out for him.

I hope he regains some form whether that be at Wigan or away from Wigan because IMHO he deserves form more than most. He has his good spells during a game but then he has his bad spells - little difference to Jekyll and Hyde IMO.

What really does seem to fire him up is someone striking out at him, although I don't recommend it maybe sometimes a good slap by Feka or someone is exaxtly what he need's.

Or is that a bad idea?

Every time Fielden takes the ball in I cover my eyes in the same way I did when Danny Campbell took the ball in towards the end of the 85 cup final.

I think Fieldens role in the team has changed, he is very much the senior prop. Its no surprise that he is being used the same time as Feka. Feka is there for his line burst's (which he is very good at), Fielden is used for his defensive skill's, (which Feka is crap at). When he was at Bradford he was one of a 4 / 5 forward line. Vangana, Peacock, Anderson, Mc Dermott & Fielden. All good big props. At Wigan he has Prescott (a kid), O' Carroll (a kid), Coley ( a large 2nd rower) and Feka (a specialist / impact prop). He either needs another Senior prop in the forward line or a change in coach who will bring in new idea's and rejuvenate him.

I take it you don't remember him backing down to Crabtree (I think) earlier this season. As somebody on here said "he's the cowardly lion," the guy has lost it and a bad performance against Saints or even wrose Wire will see him chased out the club a la Mathers.

Slipped my mind that one actually. I think for Wigans and Fieldens sake, he need's to leave and find a new club. It's best for both parties IMHO.

I don't think it is time for him to retitre neither do i think he has lost his appetite for the game. Remember the try he scored a few matches back and his reaction afterwards.

He came here with a big reputation and reportibly on a big contract and since his arrival we have not had another quality prop to back him up. Feka is good in bursts, coley is decent enough and then we have just had kids. If we do sign this 'enforcer' prop for next year and some of the pressure is lifted from his shoulders i think we would see a better player. At Bradford he had Vagana, Anderson and Peacock.

Also he has had a lot of stick from the crowds aswell as on places like this. I've said this about others before. If we support our players instead of giving them stick (even if sometimes they deserve it) it can only help improve peformance and confidence which counts for a lot in this game.

Someone with a better wit than me should dream up a good chant for him, get it sung and out of curiosity see what reaction we get.

Needs to get his head sorted, he looks ok physically, but even in the warm up he has a nervous look about him.

Not sure how you put it right, I think moving on will be part of the answer, but if anyone ever manages to sort out whatever is going on in his head you can be sure he'll come back to haunt us!

He is finished, his heart isnt in it anymore and you can tell he doesnt want to be there, if he was on an average wage he would probably leave but with the amount of money he's on who would leave really?

Im embarrassed for him he gets beaten every drive he trys to make, drops the ball every single match and the only thing he can pride himself on is his defence but its just not worth it. Will be glad to see the back of him, and if his form suddenly comes back next year when contract time is up i will be extremely p*ssed off.

mate you are spot on one the the best posts i have seen in a long while,actually when you look back he was not at his peak the last season with bradford.

Don't do that you will miss a lot of the game and he'll still drop the ball anyway.

I alway hoped he'd turn his form round, but sadly it doesn't seem like he will.

He's lost the aura he had round him after Mason decked him then the fight against Radford.

I don't know if anyone recalls it (sure you will) but i think back to a game against Saints and that joker Wilkin was beckoning him to stick one on him, Fielden just played the ball and did nothing. He might have been sent off, but i think if he'd just smashed wilkin in the face and started a brawl, it might just show he had some knackers left and show people he won't take it.

I noticed on friday how on several occasions the dummy half and half backs completely left him out of the moves at times, and would pass it past him. I watched the game again on sky+ when i got home and counted 6/7 occasions when he was in a position to take a carry and was not passed the ball.

So the players must realise it as well.

It's such a shame, because i honestly think if we had the Fielden that smashed west tigers to pieces, we would have the prop we desparately crave.

Aye my uncle pointed that out to me at the time as well. You can hardly blame them though, we were getting a roll on and he might have screwed it up.

Even when it was obvious he wasn't the player he was at Bradford during the whole 2007 season and most of 2008 I seem to remember most fans cheering him if he made more than five yards and loving it if he bounced off a few players.

He even got some polite applause when that happened on Friday. I think most Wigan fans, me included, want Fielden to perform more than most on the pitch because if he did he would give us what we crave in the prop department and we would see one of the best props in the SL era back to his best so for me the fans have actually be lenient with him.

Unfortunately though nothing will improve his game because he has lost it for good.

A Wigan fan has just been on the phone-in on GMR slating htis thread!

Spot on.

Prob a relation

i remember several times when stu came to the jjb with bradford, he looked mean and fired up, even during the warm ups before the game. i think he had a lot of brute force forwards alongside him at the bulls that enabled him to gain his fearful reputation, he came to wigan and at first brought some of that aggression with him, i think he genuinely beleived he was one of rugbys hard men, unfortunately at wigan he did not have anyone alongside him to back him up, he has gradually run out of steam, but once his reputation had gone with the mason incident and to a lesser extent the radford boxing match, i just think the guy has lost face and he just doesn't want to be here anymore, but he won't walk away because of the money he is on. if he has anything about him he should do the decent thing and pack in or move from wigan, i think that would probably get him some respect back from the fans. feel sorry for the guy and gutted how things have turned out for us, thought at the time he was going to be one of the greatest signings we had ever made.

He didn't just slate the thread, he also said Fielden was in the top 3 props in SL. I doubt he's even in the top 3 props at Wigan.

He's obviously spent the afternoon on the ale.

Wasn't a sandwich shop owner from Keighley was it?