When criticising Leeds on here about squad make-up people often point to Wigan and praise them.

Mossop was a bullet dodge and Isa - no thanks and the less said about Tautai's performance tonight the better. They've hardly always got it great in their recruitment unless it's a former player coming back from a fail stint in NRL/RU. Williams and Manfredi obviously are good players who broke through around 18/24 months ago but looking at the next youngsters coming in they don't look that good at all.

true, they don't look anything special. What game was Tautai playing last night ?? certainly was not rugby !!

Wigan really ought to have lost to this season's current bottom club last week at home. They are now looking at a series of fixtures away from the DW which could be interesting, like Leeds they have several key players out injured but unlike Leeds they managed to get some points in the bag early by winning the close games. I expect they'll be offering no excuses and alluding to off-field issues though.

They'll still hammer us at the Magic weekend.

You mean like blaming the virus in the camp for the Wakey hammering?

Mossop wasnt all that before he left for the NRL and hes been absolute garbage since he came back. Some of my fellow Wigan supporters can see no wrong in him but for me he is just cr@p

Hallelujah. Mossop has always been a pudding. He once came into a brawl against Saints & lamped Saints smallest forward (who had started it) then backed off. That's the only thing I can ever remember him doing on a rugby pitch. Credit to [Gareth], there were Pies raving last week that he had returned to his pre-NRL best. He has, his best is garbage.

Wigan's recruitment in the front-row over the last few years has been a parade of mediocrity - Pettybourne, Flower, Dudson, Clubb, Mossop, Tautai.

And yet they've still managed to be competitive for the big prizes, because they play within a system both in attack and defence which doesn't ask those players to do more than truck it in, find the ground and hit anything that runs in their general direction. Credit for that goes to a much maligned coach. He's got a forward pack which is much better collectively than the sum of its parts.

One of the highlights last night was Clubb (as usual hitting the kicker late) & coming off second best. The guy's just a dumb thug.
Hard to see why Wane rates him so highly.

Can't argue with this.

i thought he looked a decent front rower a few years back when Wigan regularly steam rollered teams around the Maguire era.since coming back from the NRL though i can't say i have even noticed he is on the pitch when watching games.Not sure what the Wigan fans make of him but i bet he is on a decent whack.

Said in pre-season that Wigan really lack a 'main guy' prop along the lines of Hill or Walmsley or what we had with Peacock. I can't remember the exact figures but combined their props had something like 9/10 100m+ games between them last year. The likes of those mentioned above had over 20 with decent totals too for the likes of Cuthbertson, Sims and Amor.

The counter argument is that it's not their style to have the props do too much work in attack and it's more on the 2nd rows and centres but only 8 carries each from their starting props in the GF when our middle was knackered was really bad tactically. Their away form was really poor last year, again is that because away from home you should be looking at being more direct and basic instead of trying to go to your edges too often.

Their style might be successful in terms of being up there and in the mix but not having that option or flexibility depending on circumstances (weather conditions, opponents, scoreline) is a key reason why they've been trophy less in the last two seasons imo.

I'm led to believe that Mossop was all set for us but the medical staff were undecided about the condition of his shoulder and wigan snapped him up whilst we were still deliberating

He's certainly not looked anything special so far this year but neither have plenty of our players

The medical couldn't find his heart. That's what swung it.