No, but that's Wigan for you. They do it week-in-week out. Silly niggling plays that can often end in injury like tonight. It's not a pretty tactic but it seems to be effective!

I posted a big list of close important games Smith had lost/won as coach of both Leeds and Wire. Fair to say the lost column was much bigger than the win one, with a rare exception of the 2004 GF

No coincidence that most of his successes
2007 GF
2010 CC
2012 CC
2005 WCC (finished close but only after a BIG lead)
Have come when it's not come down to the wire (no pun intended),

Defeats
2005 GF
2005 CC
2006 CC
2006 Playoffs
2007 playoffs to Saints
2011 playoffs to Leeds
2012 GF
2013 GF

Smith teams don't function well when they don't get to play Plan A and it becomes a gut check and a battle of substance over style.

My thoughts too.

McIlorum was superb.

Green played well but I think he got the sympathy (agenda) vote due to him overcoming the early injury and battling on... in the same way Sinfield did last year.

Press choice of mom disputed by fans shocker. I'm amazed Sam didn't win it

Nah not really fussed just stating who I thought was the best player. Tomkins went ok, took a very good catch off a bomb but Wire stopped him making the decisive breaks in attack by focusing hard to stop him. This probably lead to the right side having chances though, which Goulding finally took after a few missed opportunities.

I think Hansen saw an opportunity to tackle a player who was still on play and did just that. Unfortunately his leg buckled under him. Players get injured through both legal and illegal tackles - that's contact sport. This was a legal tackle.

Ha! Was more of a dig at ss.com's biggest troll! He rarely seems to reply to constructive criticism these days.

Wigan were worthy winners (slightly different IMO from worthy Champions as continue to feel the club does not represent all that is good about RL). But the whole game lacked the quality I would expect from a Grand Final. Some really soft tries in there that would have left me mortified if I'd seen us do that in one of our finals.

What's not to like?

Plenty of young home grown players, play like an nrl team as opposed to leeds headless chicken approach.

They are a beacon of sporting perfection.

I thought that. Some poor close range tries with poor defense.

exactly. Unless he is targeting the knees then I don't have a problem with it. The tackle needed finishing off

jessie bromwich, melbourne storm, WCC ring any bells?

I didn't see it like that.

I thought Hansen saw the opportunity to "do" the Warrington player and he took the opportunity to do it as hard as he could.

I think the completion of the tackle was of little interest to Hansen. He went into the collision with the intent to hurt the player. And given he was pretty much going straight into the back of someone not expecting it IMO there was a serious danger of major injury.

Hansen's tackle may have been legal. The Wire incidents definitely were not legal. But IMO Hansen's was a great deal more of a *wrong* challenge than the Warrington players challenges.

I don't really have any sympathy for Warrington over it. Westwood's hit really was a c**** hit and the later one was a bad one too. But they were the kind of nonsense that often happens during tackles and most of the time doesn't get seen. Hansen's challenge was many times worse for me and no amount of "it was legal" comments is going to alter that.