I think that for quite a bit of the season Joel will play centre to Bridges winger role.....unless Bridge can learn to pass to his right

i was at your place the other week and he folded one of your players in half ... the lads an animal... he would try and hit a train if he thought it was on his tracks.

You lost me pal, last season Bridge put in some absolute pearling passes including the very fast passes (which he's become quite consistent with) in which he collects it and realises it in the same movement.

A 'fake' step thats worked for a few seasons now.. long may it continue from 1 or 6.

You have the worst signature on RL Fans.

To the game.. I thought we looked rusty and Wigan looked more the "season ready" side. I hope it was just down to the fact that Wigan were our first real opponents of pre-season where as they have already played Salford but we looked tired and disjointed.

I still dislike Wigan's defensive tactics in the wrestle, but you cannot argue if they work and are deemed legal.

Ryan Hoffman is a big unit and he and Lima will add fire to their pack which they might argue they didnt need having won the league last year, but they are clearly stronger with them in the side.

They are in for a good year again, but don't think we'll be that far away once the season in underway.

Finally, to those bagging Joel Monaghan or comparing him to Hicks.. have a word with yourselves. 1 game.

Not too concerned about last night. We still look a bit of a 'work in progress' as i think Smith is trying to further develop our style. Looking at the attacking moves, especially in the final 3rd of the pitch we seemed a bit slower at moving the ball than Wigan, and running a bit flatter (see Farrell's & Tuson's tries for the benefit of deep runners). The weak link in our goal line attack seemed to be Grix as it slowed down at this point each time - i think that was more just his hand speed than anything else.

As the Guardian match report pointed out too - we need to tighten up in defence a lot, but again, better to have this pointed out by the best team in the competition than find out during the first game. We need to cut down on the penalties around the ruck (and that largely means Ben Harrison needs to cut them down after last night). It's easy yards ofr the oppo

We did some good things in attack and got ourselves into dangerous positions, just lacked that final killer touch.

Overall, we were ok. Lots of things to turn up a notch, but ten days should see that accomplished.

It's one thing to know that a player has a 'fake step forward', it's quite another to stop him using it successfully. Copyright Darren Lockyer 2002.

Was anybody else disappointed with our approach to the game? It looked to me that Wigan realised this was their final practice match before the season starts and we had an element of it being a friendly about us. I found that aspect quite disappointing to be honest.

My thoughts were semi-confirmed speaking to Atkins after the game where he said Smith told them to 'go and enjoy themselves'

Wasn't as good as Ben Harrisons on Ian Mort the year before. Morty didn't get up for about 5 mins. The player that Louis hit this year got up stright away, he is Jimmy Taylor and he is another who hits hard. If Jimmy was as big as Louis then he would be in SL. He has the heart of a lion.

who was it who failed to make touch twice ? was it briers i couldnt see was in south stand

hodgeson and monaghan, I think

I did notice that, but tended to put it down just to lack of fitness pre-season. However, as the game wore on, and we were missing more and more tackles, It's something that I did think about, just the fact that they wasn't really trying to bring the ball carrier down.

A lot of Wigan fans apparently are saying that we are in trouble this season if that is how we are going to play. If that's what Smith has said to the team, I suppose in a way that's a good sign because we know that they weren't playing to how they can play and at the start of the season, I'm sure we'll see an improvement tenfold against Hudds than what was on show last night.

i think, we're going to take some time to adjust to including hodgson in the play making aspect, going off last night he's going to have huge involvement rather than just chiming in, it surprised me last night just how much he did have his hands on the ball as opposed to briers and myler at times.

Compare that with wigan who had a familiar 6/7/9 that they're used to,


oh annoyingly good bye littler gap, hello the Liam Farrell gap.

Generally speaking i would agree with you but last night Bridge didnt seem to "be able to pass" to Joel on his outside. OK, it may be tactics, it may be poor decision, it may be any number oif things but with a bloke the size of Joel and with his ability there, I would have thought the ball would have gone that way more often than it did. The passing along the line was good, it just always seemed to stop when it reached Bridge.