So the dust has settled from Friday and he has now had a full season in charge. For me it has been disappointing.

We thought he was a motivator, and yet we have lost every big game this year (both Warrington games and both semi finals). We also lacked killer instinct, losing every game that was closer that 12 points except Hull KR.

We thought he would be good at developing players, yet every player in the starting 17 has either stayed the same or gone backwards bar Goulding, Hock and Hughes who didn't really play last season and Finch who finally settled in. On top of that he didn't give enough experience to the young players who needed it i.e Russell/Murphy, Powell and L.Tomkins. This left us in a sticky situation at the business end of the year with Lockers having to cover at 6, then 9, and Murphy playing in a semi final for his second ever game. Also when Richards was out injured I think it would have been a lot smarter to play Gelling/Hughes at centre and Goulding out wide but I know many will disagree on that point.

Man for man we look weaker next season, so the teams needs to be greater than the sum of its parts. That's the job of the coach though, isn't it? I'm not saying we should get rid just yet, but I'm far from confident that he is the man to take us forward. Thoughts?

For me it is as expected and predicted by many when he took over.

Nobody ever said that his man management and ability to motivate his players was in any doubt and I think that has been proved.

The question mark was always over his tactical ability and I think that has been justified by being dumped out of both competitions due to the wrong tactics.

Can't say I disagree TBH.

Mossop has gone backwards IMHO, at parts he showed what he could do but most of the time he seemed to lose heart. I asked this question after the Leeds SF - Mossop has all the potential in the world, but does he have the bottle? My answer is No.

We do look weaker for next season, I'm far from happy with the acquisition of Blake Green. Waste of money. Wane should of spent the money where we really need it, mainly prop. Powell could of been promoted or Sam back to halves and promoting Murphy.

It's a controversial question considering our final league position but its still valid; Is Shaun Wane the man to take us forward to SL/CC titles?

To be fair, I think Powell would have had more game time and we wouldn't have signed Matty Smith had it not been for him picking up a broken leg in the u20s. With Mellor on loan to Widnes this left us very short of cover in the halves as in my opinion Leatherbarrow will never reach the appropriate standard. We should have given Logan more game time. Personally I am against wholesale rearrangement of the starting 13 and playing players out of position when we pick up an injury or a ban. These are the times we should be blooding the young kids in their natural positions; wing gets injured then we replace with u20s wing, 2nd row injured then replace with u20s second row etc.

But is Iestyn Harris not responsible for our attack ? Just a thought.

At the end of the day the overall responsibility is with the coach, after all its his coaching staff.

Wane has not had a full squad available. Fielden and Roberts took up a lot of salary cap when his oppo coaches didn't have that problem, Prescott has missed a lot of the season.
His mistakes were, not enough pre season friendlies which ended with us losing the first game to Hudds. Playing far too many U20s at Widnes and losing.
Then when Tommy was injured, he left Mellor at Widnes. If he'd brought him back then Finch could have stayed at 6 and Lockers 13.

What he has achieved is that when we hit form the Rugby we played was breathtaking. The Magic game v Saints, wins away at Leeds and Catalans. Then Tommy's injury stopped us, form went and the results too. SW never the less has coached a team to top of the league in his first season which is impressive.
Hopefully with Fielden and Roberts gone the full salary cap can be put on the field. I'm sure that with the size of front row next year and the fact that younger props can do extra minutes should we cop an injury, we'll do well next season.
Like all teams we need a good off season with three friendlies prior to the first SL game so the squad can hit the ground running.

It's a bit harsh to suggest that Wane has made any of the players worse than what they were before. After all many players started off better than they had been under Maguire and then went off the boil late on in the season. I'd say that's down to not managing the team properly over the course of the season and allowing most of the players to peak too early.

Mossop's form dipped like several other players but I don't believe he's gone from being one of the most promising forwards in the country to a poor player in the space of a few months. You don't just lose ability. Early in the season he was matching and outplaying some very good and very experienced forwards so he's clearly got that ability.

It's not the first time a team has looked excellent at the start of the season and then faded badly towards the end and looked lethargic.

I'm not worried about the ability of the players under Wane or concerned that he's making them bad players, I'm worried about his ability to coach a team in a sensible way.

He criticised Madge's approach saying the team could have done better in some games and scored more points and he was absolutely right. The problem is there was a reason Maguire and many other coaches played such a straightforward, simple style of rugby. If you give players license to throw the ball around they will eventually take liberties and go too far in the other direction and stop playing common sense rugby.

Tony Smith found that out at Warrington. You can't just go around battering teams when it doesn't matter and then try to play the same style in big games. There has to be a focus on doing the simple things early on and the reason Wire and Leeds are in the Grand Final is because in big games they've done the simple things well, focused on forwards domination and only chanced their arm if the opportunity arose.
Wire got it wrong in the first playoff game against Saints, tried to overcomplicate things and failed. Yesterday they kept it much more simple and it worked wonders.

In the crucial games Wigan seemed to think there was no need to alter the approach and that throwing the ball wide would work against any team at any time. Too often they would overcomplicate simple plays, like putting the ball through three different pairs of hands only for a forward to drive it up the middle on the 3rd tackle in their own half. There's just no need; it greatly increases the risk for no significant gain.

its all very well spouting what you would have done differently, but their is no evidence or indication any of the supposed resolutions would have left us in a better position.

*opinions*

Said all season I didn't think he would take us forward, and il stand by it. I still think over the next 2/3 years we will go backwards with him coaching us. Time will tell and I hope I'm wrong.

As a leeds fan my opinion of shaun wane is he is a very good coach and i think he has done a great job, yeh we beat you in the semi of the cc, and on friday, but i thought on friday it really could have gone either way, both sides gave it their all.

youve had the best attack and d over the season and finished top, obviously to miss out on OT is a big disappointment for you guys but its defo not all doom and gloom

I don't think anyone is questioning his ability, its his heart that is in question. Does he have the heart/toughness in big games? In a semi-final game when your forwards are needed to step up and be counted? I don't want to turn this into a Mossop bashing, but it's obvious to see he doesn't have the heart.

The rest of your post I completely agree with.

To be fair at 23 he's still very young for a prop and in most of the big games he hasn't had much help from more experienced players backing him up. It's a tough ask for such a young player to effectively be the leader of the pack. It's also only his second season playing as an out and out prop forward if I'm not mistaken.

Chris Hill is of a similar age and has done well for Warrington but in a lot of the big games he's been backed up by good performances by Morley, Carvell and Westwood. He's part of a pack containing two of the most experienced forwards in the league.
At Wigan, Mossop is our equivalent to a Morley or Carvell really because to be honest him and Lima have been our two main forwards.

I would argue that he started the season well but suffered a loss of form and that's been his biggest issue. In his first 16 games of the year he missed just 5 tackles and then in a 6 games spell starting with the home game against Hull he missed 9. That's suggests a significant dip in form defensively.

Maybe he does lack a bit of heart in the big games but props only tend to mature later in their careers. If he's a big weak when it matters now it doesn't necessarily mean that will always be the case. It's a learning curve.

I think it goes back to the issue of having an inexperienced pack or perhaps a slightly unbalanced pack.

The rest of the team also seemed to lose form at the same time as Mossop so it could be a collective thing rather than one or two individuals letting the team down.

I think your wrong about wane , I personally think we'll be a better team for all the disappointment we've suffered this year.

And I agree with you.

No evidence - of course, he didn't take the action I would have taken so how can there be evidence that it would have worked?
No indication - oh yes there was. Murphy only being one injury away from the first team, and struggling in the semi final indicates he should have been given more game time during the year. O'Loughlin Isn't a good stand off or hooker, I think pretty much everyone accepts that. Whether Powell or L.Tomkins would have done a better job I don't know, but when Leuluai and later McIllorum were unavailable, there was no question of playing either of them, because they hadn't been given any experience. The amount of batterings we handed out and the fact that league placings don't count for much indicates Wane had ample opportunity to give the lads gametime. As for the positioning of Goulding and Gelling, many will disagree but it just made sense to me, we knew Goulding was a good winger and Gelling wasn't, and we knew Gelling's first choice position was centre. I also don't believe that not one player would have improved this season if he was a great coach, but no one did.

He's been a very poor replacement for Madge imo and i say that for a few reasons.

1- At some points it's been the 'Wane show' with some very poor and, imo, crass comments made in the press. Almost every time he's opened his mouth it's come back to bite us. It really makes you appreciate the classy and quiet way Madge went about his business.

2- He's taken our strongest area from last season, our defence, and seemly ignored it for a more attacking game plan. For me we no longer seem to shut teams out, gang tackle or really have the same level of aggression seen in previous seasons. I saw a comment on Twitter today in regards to the Storm which said great attack wins you games but great defence wins you championships! Never a more true word spoken for me.

3- Too many injuries have occurred in training and they've hurt us and our performance. Sam out from an injury picked up in training. Both Finch and Lima were ripping it up prior to picking up big injuries in training.

4- An inability to see what's going wrong. Why persist with Lockers at 6 when Tommy was injured? We had 3 games with him there and it ruined us. Why not just bring Mellor from Widnes in? He surely could have been just as good if not better than Lockers was. Lockers at 9 for the biggest game of the season? Why not start Smith there and let him play the 80mins which is something he can easily do?

5-Signings for next season have been poor. ATEOTD Wane tells IL what positions he needs players to sign in. I think Green might be ok but i dam sure know Sam would be better than him. Why not spend what was quoted as a 'considerable sum' on a different FB like Eden from Hudds and move Sam to HB?

Apart from no. 5, I agree entirely

our defence in our run of big wins april to june was incredible. since, i would agree its been sadly lacking.

I'm pretty disappointed with how we bottled the two biggest games of the season but i won't slag Wane off just yet.

Losing Leuluai hit us more than i thought it would and we didn't seem to get up to speed quick enough when he came back. Also, Micky Mac's head explosion shouldn't be forgotten - you could argue that that was the first nail in our coffin, with Sam's injury the last. As soon as it was announced he was injured i knew we wouldn't beat Leeds.

Sorry, but I can't agree with you there.

Goulding isn't a good winger, he had 1 good season in 2010, and to be quite honest I could have scored a dozen tries outside of Gleeson that year with our attack. He mis-reads plays when he's out on the wing, and whilst flying out of the line at times and making the tackle can be of use, if you miss it then 9 times out 10 you concede. I can't remember a Wigan player being as eager as he was to fly off his wing and make a play that the stand off should be defending as he often did. Granted, Gelling isn't a Pat Richards, but putting him outside of Carmont and keeping Goulding in his natural position was by far the better option IMO.

On the topic of Wane, I expected us to finish below Saints and Wire at the start of the year, so I didn't expect to win the shield. It became obvious he didn't rotate as much as he could/should have, but more experienced coaches than him (just like Tony Smith last year) have paid the price for that.

The rugby has been as good as I've seen at times this year, we didn't, under any circumstances, get our tactics wrong against Wire at home, we lost because of 2 minutes of madness by Lauaki giving them 2 penalties to win the game. I'd argue that we didn't get our tactics wrong against Leeds in the CC either - we gave them 4 tries because of errors in our own half and then were kicked to death by Sinfield and a shocking call for the try McGuire scored. Had Sam not mis-read the 40/20, and had Thaler understood the definition of a knock on, then we could have had a Wembley trip under our belts again.

As for Friday, it was a horrible way to lose, but had Murphy played 1 or 21 games this year, he'd still have dropped that ball which led to the penalty.

Wane's big test will come in 2013 as we have to go through our first perceived 'downgrade' of the squad for a few years with Tommy, Finch, Carmont and Lima leaving.

Thank gawd for this post.

A lot of the criticism about wane seems to be based on "what if" arguments. Who's to say Mellor would have been better than lockers at 6 when tommy was out, or if Logan would have done a better job at hooker since mcilorum has been out!?

And criticising next years signings before they've played is ludicrous in my opinion. We all knew the standard of imports coming in would be drastically reduced once the salary cap in Oz went up. The RFL and sky have known about it also and chose to do nothing about it, meaning we are likely to see more of our top talent going in the opposite direction, especially if further expansion teams enter the NRL.

Wane definitely isn't blameless though. We had mid season games where we were dynamite and put Leeds and saints well and truly to the sword. For whatever reason we were unable to replicate these performances in the big games that really mattered. Players that were in sparkling form earlier in the year dropped off and never got it back (Mossop, Lima, mcilorum, Goulding, finch for starters). We don't seem to have used the 2 free weekends very effectively. We seemed to lack a plan B when plan A wasn't working, and some weeks our forwards were getting dominated. Poor kicking has let us down once again, despite it looking like we'd got over that earlier in the year.

I disagree, Goulding had proven himself to be a capable winger. He's not a bad winger by any stretch of the imagination and claims that he shot out of the line and mis-read the play are hugely exaggerated. If he was that bad then he'd never have been a part of Maguire's squad. It's the usual notice a flaw and suddenly it happens 'all the time'. Goulding was never a bad winger but he was never a natural and never a top winger, just a solid, hard working winger.

The reason he lost his place on the wing was because of fumbles with high balls against Catalans when he also picked up an injury and that let a natural winger, Charnley, get a chance and there's no doubt that Charnley is a very good winger.

The reason not to play Goulding on the wing was that he was doing very well at centre and had, if anything, strengthened that right hand side considerably in defence and therefore it would be a poor decision to take him away from that role. Gelling's defence at centre in the under 20's playoff game against Leeds showed why it would be a bad idea to play him at centre ahead of Goulding.

The biggest concern with the team under Wane is the lack of composure in important games. They messed up in the first half during the cup semi and messed up in the first half during the playoff semi and at times the team just didn't play sensible rugby.

The team just overcomplicate things at times. If you look at the way Melbourne play early on they play one out rugby in their own half. They do that almost all the time, taking no unnecessary risks. We played the exact same way under Maguire and it was pretty effective. Under Wane we don't do that any more and the team sometimes just overcomplicate things for no reason at all. In the game against Catalans the ball went through four pairs of hands on one occasion just so it could be given to Hansen who drove it up the middle and knocked on. Why on earth is there any need to overcomplicate what should be simple plays when the risks far outweigh the potential gains. It's not the only occasion when the team has been trying to pass the ball when it isn't necessary and they should have just concentrated on going forward and waited until there was a chance to start playing.

We also peaked far too early, something that was pretty easy to realise for many and the irony was that when Sam Tomkins said 'we haven't even peaked' after the hammering of Leeds the team was at it's peak.

It's alright saying Wane was inexperienced and learned a lesson like Tony Smith did last year but that's not an excuse for why he didn't learn from that either. That was a lesson for all coaches, not just Smith.