i like hock, how many times does he offload in a tackle and the player nearest him is looking the other way? he run's it in hard, can step, make's brake's and is good in defence generally. i do think he is better off the bench though

I rate Gaz Hock very highly and he can be a match winner, he is undoubtedly world class on his day and I don't think too many people would argue with that. When Wigan are on top in games, Hock stands out as one of our best, his offloading can be fantastic, he runs in hard and has good vision.

The problem comes when things aren't going our way, when for whatever reason we end up having to defend repeat sets of 6. Hock is the one who will argue with the referee when we get penalised for being offside and give away another ten metres; Hock is the one who will get frustrated and tackle someone high; Hock is the one who, when we have heroically defended our line for 12 tackles, and eventually get the ball back will run to dummy half and knock on for no reason whatsoever; Hock is the one who will throw a wild pass out and the other side will pick the ball up and score. His lack of composure and his rapidly increasing levels of frustration leave us facing an uphill battle and cause the rest of the team to start getting frustrated and the opposition to gain confidence. The fans start booing and the team get demoralised and we end up losing to teams who, on paper, are not as good as us.

If we were a World class side you can get away with having a couple of players with these type of flaws in their game but unfortunately we aren't a world class side, we are a massively inconsistent side. We are capable of beating the best when things go our way, but the reality is things don't always go our way and in these situations we need solid, consistent level-headed players who you can rely on to defend well and keep hold of the ball in attack. In this situation the boot goes on the other foot, the opposition get frustrated about not being able to score, then they make mistakes and we will be much more effective in attack.

A decent sports psychologist would quickly iron out the problems in Hock's game but as it stands I simply do not agree with the the apparent view that he should be in the side every week regardless of what he does wrong.

When we start to get the basics right as players like Hansen do the rest will fall into place. Schoolboy errors are losing us too many games, fact.

Hock is only ever bad when Wigan as a team are bad

Cause and effect.

got nothing to do with willie mason , the lad should never have gone over there in the first place , his mother died just before it , and even had tickets to go over and watch , as shes done in every game hes played , the lad has not got over her death in my eyes , some people greive in differant ways , and this , and only this has effected his game , not willie mason, the lads lost his mother and hasnt played like himself since , so give the guy a break !

Without knowing what is actually Fielden, no one actually knows what, if anything is wrong with him.
What we do know is he isn't the player he once was, unfortunately RL and Wigan is a business, if a player isn't performing and is on a lot of CAP the situation must be examined for the sake of the team.

I honestly feel sorry for Stu, but other things sadly come first in this situation.