He did well in the poachers role tonight, picking up loose balls from our mistakes.

Not a very good half back though.

I felt for Joe Mellor tonight. He's got sublime stepping skills and used to have bucket loads of pace to go with them and without a bad knee injury could have had a spectacular career at Wigan IMO but I just can't see it now. He's lost too much pace and like most British halfbacks coming through at u20's level over god knows how long they're brought up on easy games where they beat players for fun with their running games and don't develop the basics of their games.

That knee injury really has killed his development.

Spot on. Never been the same player since the kneecap bust. He looks busted mentally as well to me to be honest. Its a total shame because he was looking the biz at the back end of the 2009 reserves season, was awesome in the Grand Final, and I reckon he'd have been up for plenty of game time. But thats the fine line.

At the end of the 2009 season he looked just as good as Tomkins had previously in the reserves. 2010 would have been a great year to bring him into the team. We could potentially have better players coming through anyway, I'm not convinced Mellor has the passing game to become a top 7.

Still don't see the harm in giving him a run in this team. O'Loughlin isn't going to set the world on fire.

With the dominant pack we have it's the best chance to see what Mellor is all about without risking the victory. Obviously he's not going to get that shot.

I thought he did well tonight MOM for Widnes for me, You could see he was trying to impress tonight and IF what I heard today is true, That his future at Wigan along with a young Pacey Winger looks bleak (with Saints sniffing round said Pacey Winger) then you could see he was trying to prove his worth, Personally i'd rather see Finch at 6 Mellor 7 with Lockers back to 13 as IMO Lockers isn't a Stand Off as long as he has a hole in his backside i've always hated when Sean is moved to 6 for me Finch looked lost at 7 without Tommy alongside him.

I think it's hard to make a proper decision after tonight. We won convincingly at a canter. We were clearly a bit rusty which is no surprise considering the last time they played together was over a fortnight ago. The fact neither Mellor nor Russel have been recalled suggests Wane is going to stick with SoL at 6 for the forseeable. FWIW I think that is right. Hughes and Farrell deserve the extra game time they will get by having Lockers at 6 than either Russell or Mellor do.

It doesn't look like Mellor is going to have a future at the club and Sean has a good enough passing game to get us through the next couple of months. It's not ideal but when you lose a top class player like Tommy it's very unlikely there is going to be a ready made replacement waiting in the wings who will offer the same impact. We'd all like every young Wigan lad to come through and make it, particularly when they show so much promise coming through the system. Unfortunately for Joe bad injuries and loss of form at the wrong times have meant that he is probably going to have to forge a SL career away from Wigan.

It will be interesting to see if Powell gets any game time when he returns from injury.

I thought the Lockers/Finch combo really didn't work tonight, despite the easy win, a lot of the tries were from individual skills rather than crafted by the halves. Even against poor opposition, we weren't creating our usual overlaps.
Hopefully, that will improve with another couple of games together, but I'd still like to have seen Mellor given a chance - I thought he did pretty well behind a well-beaten pack.

Like I say i think the whole team were rusty so I'm saving my judgement at this stage. The forwards ran well and the defence was strong but the slick handling we've been used to seeing wasn't there. I definitely wouldn't be against Mellor having another chance. FWIW I thought he played very well when he was given half an hour at Salford a couple of months ago. Looking at how events have played out since Tommy's injury though it doesn't look to me as though he's in Shaun Wane's plans, either long term or short term. I think how he was chased down by Hughes during that breakaway show just how much pace he has lost. I know Hughes is no slouch and it was a bit of a weird stop start breakaway but you would have expected him to get there.

Wane's got a lot of thinking to do at this stage. He needs to get a settled h/b partnership ready for the CC semi which would suggest getting Lockers and Finch to play together against Bradford and Wakey. The silly midweek Exiles game could be a spanner in the works however and he might want to give one or both of these a rest if they feature in that game as well.

I'd give him a run in the Wigan team now. Playing behind this pack even I would be made to look good playing in the halves!!!!!!!!!

Oh i don't think so, many here think that SOL can't, why would you be able too?

i don't think i watched the same match, he skinned Sam on a couple of occasions and has good acceleration and pace by the bucketloads.

hard to judge him behind an innefective widnes pack if you ask me.

Our attack didn't look crisp like it's been all season the amount of times we was going for set moves and the passing was pretty terrible i lost count of something needs to change

We missed Lockers link up play at 13 I think.

Yes, I was worried we'd miss Tommy at 7 but we also missed lockers at 13. I like Faz but he does not have Lockers passing skills close to the line. He is more of a runner than a creator.

I agree, it seemed to be the link in the middle of the field that was missing most. It's hard to go from a team that has three pivots in attacking moves to one that uses two.

I also thought having Hughes and Lloyd on the right didn't help create much space on the right. They are both naturally left sided and that's where they have played most of their rugby so their timing of runs was occasionally a little off.

I think Wane was right to go with Lockers against Widnes and I'm sure he'll either work to speed up the attack with Finch and Lockers in the halves or look to change things around a little.

Very much so. Against a team as poor as the Vikings, we'd normally have been creating overlaps at will, but that simply didn't happen. The forwards were doing their usual job of sucking the defensive line in, but we weren't taking advantage as we've been doing so well with Tommy in. Lockers doesn't have the "show-and-go" threat to play in the halves, IMO.

Does any one else think the Exiles match and two weeks away could have affected the teams sharpness? Also against the lesser teams we do seem to be not as sharp such as the Broncos match. We have just gone through a tough period of fixtures and I think Wane had the team hitting a peak for that period and he'll be working up again.

We certainly did, the ball stops dead when Farrell gets it and he blew quite a few chances when we had overlaps down the right. We also missed Tommy attacking on the right. If Farrell doesnt let the ball flow to Sam and Goulding as O'Loughlin does then our right hand side will suffer. Charnley may have still got a hat trick but that says more about how poor Widnes are and the sheer amount of chances we had than anything great about our attack imo.

I think it just goes to show how important O'Loughlin is at 13 for us. Do we have anyone in the Academy remotely as good?

Mellor will be at widnes next season

It's a bit much to be expecting someone from the academy to be even remotely as good as O'Loughlin is at 13.

A ball playing 13 might become a thing of the past depending on how teams decide to play so there's no guarantee that a future 13 will have to compare to O'Loughlin.

There's time for Farrell to develop into a very good 13, Rhodri Lloyd could be used in that role in future although if we wanted a future ball playing loose forward then Connor Farrell is a very good ball player.

I'm pretty sure O'Loughlin used to be used fairly equally at stand off and at loose forward in the academy; he was certainly good enough at stand off as a junior and that's where his ball playing ability came from.