he's an utter backside....

Sam Tomkins Needs protecting
rlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/18538370rl

After a late high shot from Michael McIlorum
"I don't think the referee got it right. Leaving your team-mates in a massive game against your arch rivals is like a suspension in itself. I don't mind the sending-off if they are consistent through the year.
rlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/19469243rl

what a door handle.

I can understand him looking after his players but on both counts he is wrong.

Sam's team mates should protect him and the officials should deal with what they see.

McIllorum deserved sending off, he was late high and I think it was intentional, not to hurt but to let the player know he was there. I don't think there is an argument for him miss timing it from the VT evidence, full on head shot.

If Saun thinks any different then he is deluded.

He might be a backside but he's won them the league in his first season in charge, with a lesser squad than ours, so he does deserve some credit.

only cause we kept resting players lol they only did it once really v widnes

Yeah Wigan have been playing their full strength team every week apart from that Widnes game

No excuse, we've got a bigger squad than them with better young players so we should have been able to handle it.

Sorry Sally don't agree, we have the same size of squad, they have some good youngsters.

I think it was to do with player 'resting' by us and a desire to play their best team each week. We were one point behind, one win where we rested players would have given us the LLS.

Tactics and a desire to gamble for the Super league play off trophy.

Hope we perform in the Play-Offs, but:

2nd in the League and another Challenge Cup isn't too bad from where we were a 5+ years ago.

He deserves credit, definitely, but so does Maguire for the legacy he left behind. I think Wigan have been a weaker side this year than last season, the problem for us being that we were weaker by a bigger margin. 2nd and Cup holders again is pretty good, definitely, but I reckon we could have managed top of the table as well with a bit less chopping and changing every week.

On another note did anyone else hear the Brett Finch interview on GMR. Wasn't happy to say the least.

ive got no doubt we have the better team just hope we prove it now it matters

I wouldn't exactly say we were weaker tbh. You look at the way we've rotated our squad this year, we've rested a lot of players throughout the season and some games in particular were lost due to this. If we had won these games then we would of come top of the league by some margin. Wigan have pretty much played a full strength team every week apart from the blip against Widnes.

As far as pure talent comes in to it; I believe we have the most talented squad in the league as can be seen by two wins of Wigan this year; the first was close but we were playing awful at that point and the second could be called a demolition and to be fair we didn't come out of third gear in that game.

Wigan will run out of steam in the playoffs like we did last year, and remember, nobody remembers who won the league leaders shield!

Still like to see where Wigan have played full strength every week apart from Widnes, but no one has backed up this made up fact yet...

We beat Wigan twice and still finished below them. In a 25 game season V the other teams in Super League they won five points more than we did - scoring more and conceding less in the process - which is an impressive achievement especially considering their Magic Weekend fixture was a lot tougher than ours.

Shaun Wane has done a good job this season as Tony Smith did last season. It is clear that Smith has held a bit back at times this year though, and we'll find out over the next month if that pays off or not. People who are trying to dismiss Wigan's chances altogether though are kidding themselves big time.

I was going to mention this also. The fact Warrington have played Widnes 3 times and Wigan played Saints 3 times, should have a bearing too, even more so when you consider that Wigan lost to Warrington twice and also Widnes once.

I think the table is a fair reflection. Warrington have been consistently good over the whole season, whereas Wigan went through the months of May and June on fire and that was just enough to see them come out on top.