No Sal that's not the case, people defend him against what you say because you seem to have- and it's been said for a long time on here, your own agenda for hardaker, he's clearly one of those players you just don't like.

I don't have an agenda for any player - McGuire apart - Hardaker is one of the best FB's in SL but he doesn't play every game mistake free which reading SS you are given the impression that he does.

Nobody is saying he's mistake free, there's a difference to that and trying to find fault in everything he does which you've just done, your countless negative comments out way the one positive thing you've ever said about him, based on that how can you say you don't have an agenda for him?

Look on the positives from time to time and it may not look this way, but until then.......

Yes Hardaker slipped but he was wrong footed by Burgess and misread his speed as he did for the Williams try where he was out of position which meant he made his tackle too late. That said it was a valiant attempt to recover and Hardaker worked hard all evening and did his best. However the MOM was Williams with Bowen close behind being the most effective full back on this occasion. Aiton also played well but again was second best to Wigan in the hooker department.

Wigan deserved to win, as I posted earlier in the week Wigan would not put in a similar performance to the Catalan one.
As I suspected they hit us hard with Bateman and Micky , full credit to them ,peacock will be feeling the effects this morning.
It's just one match as was the Wigan display at Catalan . I think our forwards tackling should be more agressive as per the Wigan style.
Probably just as well we have wakey next week, might be time for sutcliffe to be given a chance.

I meant the Williams try pal. It was soft from Cuthbertson and Sinfield.

Can't do it. Too many old legs who can't sustain the line speed required. Lots of times Aiton tries to set the line speed on his own by flying up, only to find nobody else has gone with him.

When you've got the likes of JJB, Ablett and Delaney all on the field at the same time, the lack of mobility and energy is the back row is alarming. They're just not the same athletes that other sides have in those positions.

Bentham refs the game in a certain way. It doesn't seem to suit us. He gave Wigan a lot of time on the ruck and let them get up very very fast. But that is our issue rather than his, that is where we have struggled and we need to find a way to win when teams are allowed to play like that.

Good game I thought. Wigan were aggressive and error free. I don't think they did anything 'great' but they beat us in the same as Wire, aggressive in defence, up quickly and in our faces, while grinding it out and being clinical with their chances.

We play a risky game, lots of offloads, lots of risks and we are very very good at it. Many times this blows teams away, however it does mean we give teams chances, when we don't blow them away and when they stick with us, defend aggressively, keep the pressure on, invariably they get chances and if they are clinical with them, we lose. That makes it sound simple, but it isn't, Wigan, and Wire before, had to play very well to win. If we can find a way to eek out more results when we cant get a quick play the ball and we can't blow them out of the water then I don't think any side could live with us.

First way to do that is to improve our last tackle options, they were poor all game yesterday and we left repeat sets, if not points, on the field by running up blind alleys or unplanned kicks.

Agree with all that. I don't think we were brilliant in other aspects (though our offloading and short passing was excellent) but I lay most of the blame at the door of McGuire and Sinfield.

Now I'm not someone who slags off players and I'm not crucifying them or saying "they're done" or need to be dropped or anything. But I thought they were both quite poor. They both looked good when they ran at the line (which is a tad ironic for our 30-odd year old halves) but were poor in getting the ball out wide and very poor at kicking. The kicking put us under a lot of pressure and meant we couldn't apply any.

Sort the kicking out and, despite our backrow looking a bit lethargic, I think we'd have won against Wigan and we'd be very difficult to beat.

You only made 2 errors more than us - 13 vs 11.
And conceded 1 more penalty - 5 vs 4

I couldn't believe how quiet Moon and Hall were. They're the best centre/wing combo in the league for me and I dreaded them going up against Tomkins and Charnley.

Yep, and Watkins too. We got sucked in to playing it around the ruck. Partly because Aiton is playing so well with short passes around the ruck, partly because our halves were poor in spreading it, and partly because your line speed was so good at getting into our faces we went back inside rather than trying to get it wider.
That's probably a credit to Wane (and your players, esp McIlorum) in seeing that width was our major threat to you and snuffing out that threat.
Your defence was excellent and meant we never found an easy gap to get through. It always bloody is when you play us. Why couldn't you play like you did v Catalans?

Its not a criticism, Wigans line get up quick and get in the oppositions face, they are an aggressive side. Todd Carney's long, well picked passes ripped that apart, our offloading game struggled because we were going backwards in contact a lot of the time.

Errors is a pretty misleading stat. It doesn't actually quantify 'errors' more dropped balls. I thought Wigan didn't make many errors, certainly in the 2nd half, in terms of wrong options and the spilled attacking ball rather than on exit sets. It was a very tight performance by them.

We on the other hand got tackled on the 5th probably 5 times in that 2nd half, including once in our own half, we bombed a couple of breaks, Handley made a couple of wrong decisions attacking and in defence, Hardaker throwing out a blind looping offload that took us from a few metres from scoring, to conceding. Even to silly things like the ref allowing a very messy ruck for both sides yet consistently running in to players who were offside or not square in the hope of a penalty. If the refs not giving them, don't try and win them.

Gets worse for us after yesterday's performance......
Just had word Hardaker is out for 8-10 weeks with ligament damage...... Leaves us with a bit of a problem until Briscoe is back.

Now that could be a season changer.