2 Unforced errors in the opening 6 minutes that lead directly to tries. Those 2 were definitely down to us playing badly.
After that, yes, you forced a lot of mistakes and capitalised on them. We forced some errors and did jack all with the possession, Delaney was like a man possessed today, your MOM imo.


Also, credit to Jones Bishop for grounding his try, brilliant catch.

I've no idea what Wigan's completion rate ended as but as it was stated on the BBC to be 65% at half-time I'd be a little surprised if they only completed at 55% in the second.



Leeds weren't superb although they also played very well. They got a few rubs of the green and that probably proved to be the difference over the eighty minutes. Even after the drop goal Leeds were still hanging on by their fingertips at times with fifteen to go. Hardaker was called upon twice to make crucial tackles (bearing in mind his effort on Hock in the first half) he did well to bring down Hughes and did remarkably to prevent Tomkins going over. At the same time Leeds should have finished the Burrow break to seal the game. I thought the ball going right to Hardaker rather than it looping left to Hall would have done the trick but Burrow's delivery didn't match his break.

The ref was poor and Wigan had an off day but if had been Trinity playing them I would have taken that. A great game for the neutral and Leeds deserved the win.

The errors and penalties in the opening 15 minutes were mainly Wigan's own doing and that's pretty much the time when Leeds won the game and Wigan lost it. There was no extra intensity or physicality to cause problems at that point, the Wigan players just made some very basic errors again and again.

After that opening period the game was more like the close contest that some though it would be but Wigan always played like they were desperately chasing the game, even when only trailing by 10 points the players just seemed to think they had to keep the ball alive all the time and there was a real lack of composure.

Leeds on the other hand were clinical when presented with opportunities in the opening quarter of the game. A lot of the tries were nothing exceptional but just sensible, well thought out play that caught Wigan when the defence hadn't really got into the game - when the first try was scored Wigan just made the same mistakes again and gifted field position and Leeds just kept on taking advantage of those gifts. The Wigan players needed some good defensive sets early on to settle down but they failed through their own mistakes and the clinical play from Leeds near the line.

its just a good job the game wasn't on sky.
we'd have only heard phil clarke crying in the background..

Phil Clarke's box of tissues was untouched yesterday.

Leeds won, it says so in the paper, enjoy the final...

As good as tomkins is let's not pretend he is radlinski under the ball

The Tomkins spill was anything but an unforced error, it was forced by an excellent high kick which spiralled away from him toward the touchline. Any full back in the world would have struggled with that.

Lest we forget that two of Wigan's tries came from Jamie Jones-Buchanan coming up with soft one-on-one misses because he was too busy trying to anticipate what was going on behind the play and lost the lead runner.

Far from it. It's his big weakness.

JJB was a statue at times yesterday in the defence and Wigan exploited it perfectly.

I've stated this before. Without a doubt it's his achilles' heel.