our forwards are to small except for tony clubb we have no impact off the bench
our centres are awful gelling I mean come on and as for sarginson don't make me laugh
matty smith worse kicker in super league by far in play and conversions how he gets in the
England team is beyond me

our big signings of the past few years
mossop
tautai
isa
is this the best we can do
fair enough the joel and sam are good players to have back
but apart from them ?????


shining lights
Farrell
bateman
clubb

Welcome to the board and great first post!



Now is the time you get placed into your clique via the RL Fans Sorting Hat like on Harry Potter.

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You have been selected to join the 'WANE OUT/LENEGHAN OUT/NON-HAPPY CLAPPER' clique. CONGRATULATIONS!

1 . never watched harry potter and never will
2. never said I wanted wane/leneghan out
instead of makings assumption and categorising me why not put good augment to as why you think I am wrong ???

Good thread this

Soz, marra. Keep your powder dry until after tonight's result though, as the opportunity to do some top class moaning may be just a few hours away

WWWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Welcome Tricky and great way to introduce yourself mate!

Considering our side is so bad, it's a wonder we did the double a couple of years ago and made the last 3 grand finals!

However, I agree in part with some aspects of your post.

Clubb is a very good signing and making a great prop. I do believe though that Flower is also a great prop and I'm glad we have him for the next 4 years. Crosby and Mossop are also good props on their day but need to find an injury free period of good form.

Matty Smith is a good game occasionally but I agree it isn't often enough.

If Sarginson finds the form that got him into the England squad he's a very dangerous attacking threat but needs to be better in the one to one tackles. I'm a fan of Gelling. He's prone to the odd brain fart or two but overall he eats up the ground and must be very hard to play against.

Overall, when you consider those missing from the team at the moment we are still able to field what looks like a decent squad for tonight.

To be fair I personally think this is one of the worst Wigan sides I've seen in a long while.

BUT

The standard of SL at the moment is at an all time low & the two go hand in hand.

The team is good enough to win something this year. That doesn't however mean it's OK to be that far behind the Australians

Well said Tricky, welcome to the moaners club of Wigan RL ( alias the UKIP of the club, no power but growing ).
I agree with some of your points, but beg to differ when you say Joel is a good player, he has shown nothing like the consistency of the form he had before he went to RU.
The jury is still out on Sam, you are not out of the game for 6/7 months for nothing, Williams with another halfback partner to take a bit of weight off him would in my opinion improve him a lot.
Flower in my opinion is our best prop.
As for Sarge and Gelling, both I think could be good players if the Wigan attack wasn't so flat (lost count of how many times I have said that).
If we didn't lie so flat it would give the centres a bit of room to get a bit of speed and space going forward instead of having defenders in their face when they receive the ball.

Great points, well made!
Glad to see the finer details of the game don't pass you by.

Sometimes, I wish I didn't have eyes.

Hi all, my take on our team

FB - When he returns hopefully Sam will provide a bit of x-factor and give the opposition a bit more to think about. He has evolved as a player since he broke into the scene and I'd be looking for him to take some pressure off the halves.

Wingers - We are pretty strong there

Centres - Both decent players but nothing special

Halves - Smith is struggling and has been for a while.
I think he is carrying Williams a bit and has too much responsibility in terms of organisation. The change was noticeable since he lost Green as his partner. Williams is still raw, should never have been selected for England. Time will tell how good he can be.

Props - Flower is top class and Clubb offers decent impact. The rest are fairly average, I'm still hoping Mossop can find the form of 4 or 5 years ago when he was knocking on England's door. We are short of a genuine big bloke IMO.

Hooker - I like MM but I feel we need a bench hooker who can offer something different. Someone with a bit of pace and a running threat, Powell just doesn't do it for me as an interchange for MM.

Back row - Very strong, no issues there.

Over all we are a good side but nothing out of the ordinary but only a two or three of players away from dominating the league. The biggest change I'd like to see is to tactics. Structures can work but we need to offer an alternative to give the defences something different to think about. IMO the alternative is an offload game. Some come off, others don't but they give an opportunity to run at a broken defence.

That is easily solved simply take a sharp implement say a knife or even a pencil will do the trick and gouge out you own eye hey presto wish come true . Just call me the genie

Even with our injured players back we are not a very good team.

We have a great chance of silverware this year though because we are the best of a bad bunch. The standard in SL has dropped off alarmingly in recent years. Just think how much better our 2010 side was than any current SL side.

It could be worse, we could be saints.....

Yeah, Saints looked very ordinary indeed last night. Their fans are not a happy bunch.

Spot on assessment there.

Everyone is awful across the board and it's been declining season on season.

You only need to look back 5 years when Madge came over. You could argue us, Saints, Dire & Leeds where all in a much stronger position.

Can't believe that people actually peddle the line that this is the best SL has been.

But this side isn't the side that did the double and I think that is the point. I also think we are trying to play the same kind of attack with players who simply can't do it compared to back then and under Madge.

Since then the sides we have had have been knocked out of the CC at the first attempt twice and lost two finals. The stats of getting to two GF's mask the issues.



I thought Smith put in some good tackles v Salford and he looks to have been practicing his kicking (so far...) but offensively I think he is part of the problem of a very one dimensional attack.

I am still bemused as to how Sarginson got picked for England in the first place. He is fast but a headless chicken with no vision. Gelling is much the same, no vision and as likely to offload to no one as he is to his winger. Another classic Gelling moment v Salford I mentioned elsewhere just before half time where he gave the ball away deep in the Salford half and they went all the way to the other end and nearly scored. Brushing these off as occasional brain farts isn't any good in my opinion. He needs to cut them out completely because in close games he is going to cost us the match.

Gelling does make a lot of ground. He is 16 stone and is bigger and taller than Isa (15 stone I think) and so there is an idea. Isa has played centre before (in fact that was his original position) so stick Gelling in our rather lightweight pack, put Isa in the centres with Gildart who I think proved he was better than either Gelling or Sarge at the end of last season and I think we'd be far better. I doubt Wane will do this though. He seems very inflexible to me so will stick with the same tactics and players and when they don't work blames mistakes and lack of execution rather than considering it might be an idea to change things around.

Tbh, and I'm opening myself up for criticism for defending it, I think a part of Gelling doing stupid stuff like that is because our attack is so one-dimensional and lacks any shape and ideas at the moment.

He is almost the ideal centre. Great feet, strong, a good defender and so dangerous close to the opposition line.

At some point you have to gamble to win. Some of the crazy stuff he does comes off and then our fans lap it up. When it doesn't he's the villain. Imagine if that kick to Manfredi last year went straight into touch, people would be saying "why didn't he dive on it?", etc. but it was perfect and we scored from it.

In a season where we're playing some pretty boring stuff, and our half-backs can't organise or create anything, he's refreshing imo.

Someone on here said last week that as long as we win, they don't care how we play. I disagree massively. If you aren't being entertained then why bother watching? Gelling is entertainment either way. If we played the perfect game like most NRL teams try to do with low percentage plays, driving to the line until they get good enough field position to put a swing move on, or bomb to the corner to score off, I would be bored to death and stop watching.

Yeah, there's a lot of truth in that for me, too.

If we had played what some here call "Entertaining" rugby, and been 0/3 or 1/3, the board would be in meltdown... The same people who complain that we are too structured, also complain that Gelling is a liability, you can't have it all ways. Whatever you may think, the problem is not just at Wigan, and Wigan alone. It's that there is not enough money in the game, and we can bring in better quality players when or if we wish..

Why would we be 0/3 or 1/3? Before Thursday we had played a poor Catalan side who dropped enough ball to last a whole season and Huddersfield with a pile of injuries. I agree there are fine lines between entertaining, winning and playing with structure though. Leeds seem to do it quite well however with the same salary cap restrictions?

Quite right, it's a fine line... And, we are not yet out of February... Grand final is in October.

I don't think Gelling is actually thinking about what he does. I don't think he has decided nothing is happening so has decided to take matters into his own hands. I think he is just on a different planet to the rest of the team. Whenever he gets the ball I have no idea what he is going to do with it and I don't think his team mates do either. I think Sarge said this the other week. They aren't moments of brilliance someone like a Hanley could pluck out of thin air but crazy decisions that if they come off look good but if they don't have fans swearing at him. Great players follow the game plan and when the opportunity arises pull something out of the hat. Gelling is not doing that is but unpredictable to the point his team mates don't know what is going on with him.



I don't think it is because his plays are just random and are likely to fail as well as succeed. I think he'd make a far better forward were his job would be to carry the ball up and not try and do the stuff with ball in hand a good centre is expected to do.

I struggle to buy all this 'our moves are old and have been figured out' or 'we do nothing different from 2010' .. oh yes we do, our core skills are appalling. You don't need fancy moves to score a try. You need the ball moved at pace and with precision onto runners hitting the line at the correct time. That creates space and overlaps to score. we then need people with a brain cell to recognise those gaps and overlaps. Sadly we are lacking in all those areas. The aussies are not magic, they do the basics very well. we are incapable of passing the ball correctly.

excuses about Williams inexperience are fine, they cover up brain fart decisions, not being able to see space or making decision at the wrong time...that comes with experience..... they do not cover the 4/5 passes he put to ground at Salford and again at Brisbane. they are inexcusable basics every professional player should have. This goes for Smith and the rest of the team. Our best ball passer is Lockers.

we need to spend less time in the gym, less time wresting each other to death and more time doing the basics.

that's my humble opinion.