what? that was the video ref, he clearly had to go upstairs with it. was clearly a knock on, just a question of who to give the ball to. christ, even clarkey wasn't complaining with the decision. the strip was horrible but all referees get some of those wrong week in week out.

someone mentioned the first disallowed try, replays showed it was a good decision. finch's try might well have been a knock on, but i don't think the camera angles would have been good enough to overturn it, and i certainly don't begrudge him for making the quick, confident decision.

he did make a really bad string of errors around the 55-60 minute mark (nearly all against wigan) but up until then it was a pretty competent display i thought.

Completely outplayed in every department by a team who on that performance look like the champions elect. Only consolation is that it's early doors, we've got players to come back and a lot can change between now and October.

Wore were by far the better side tonight and thoroughly deserved their win. We defended well enough in the first half but they spent a lot of tome on out=r line and it took a lot of juice out of our tank.

Then add to that our very bad mistakes on attack in those first 10 minutes of the second half and the result was inevitable. 100% for effort but 50% for composure.

Anyone looking to blame Alibert needs to take the Wigan specs off tbh. He's an awful ref as we all know but he wasn't to blame for our defeat in the slightest. We were well beaten by a better side on the night and we need to learn some lessons.

Alibert is out of his depth for sure but that stands for both sides. He always looks to his linesmen or listens in his ear for people to help him ref the game and when he does try to make a call on his own he usually gets it wrong but hey ho with a ref like that you will always win as many as you lose. It's not ideal but all teams have to put up with him.

A few things from my point of view:

- Wire ran our defence all over the park. They were playing a much wider game early on to go around our narrow sliding defence and spotted every time they had a numerical advantage - several of us in the crowd spotted their overlap before the ptb for Monaghan's second try. Their dummy lines and options were far better than ours and ran us ragged.
- In attack we looked devoid of fresh ideas - we were trying to squeeze sweeping moves into narrow spaces and it was never going to work. Wire ran the moves we normally do so well fantastically.
- Contested high balls - it's a bit of a lottery at times but I don't think we won a high ball challenge all game.
- Poor hands - the ball just wasn't sticking today. It happens.
- Terry Halibut is shocking. He reversed a drop-out decision to a handover to Wigan following pressure from the crowd - now, right or wrong, he should stick with his decision or go to the vid ref immediately. He missed loads and was equally bad for both teams. Simply not good enough.
- Marsh - offers nothing whatsoever. Can he actually pass?? Give Charnley a shot at centre and stick Marsh on the wing where he'll be another Goulding - unspectacular but solid. At the moment he renders his side useless.

Wire were on fire, we were horribly poor, the better team won and no complaints. That said we had 3(?) tries disallowed and were well in the game for the most. I'm not too disheartened - with our first-choice lads back we'll match them no bother.

Well played Wire.

Are you kidding? I thought Wigan have some excellent attacking structure, your decoy runners cause defensive huge problems and the only thing that impressed me more than the attacking line was the way the Warrington defence coped with it tonight, play that game again any other night with the same 17's and the result could be very different.

Well done Warrington was better team tonight just about in all aspects. Was a poor performance from our boys but i'm sure we'll bounce back.

IMO game could have been alot closer with some dodgy decisions going our way. First try disallowed was debatable when Hoffman was contesting for the high ball and then at 18-6 Hoffman went over and Briers definatley had his hand in he didnt make any attempt to make the tackle just attacked the ball. Also the strip on Hoffman when we was attacking which was completely blatant. Carmont 1 on 1 with Blythe nothing wrong with that at all. Then onto Westwood ? why was he not given a yellow for throwing a good 3-4 punches at Sam Tomkins who hadnt done anything and didnt retaliate, if that had been Joel Tomkins lettin lose throwing punches at Briers/Myler i'm pretty sure he would of been given his marching orders. Besides all of that i'll admit Warrington were still by a fair distance the better team and definatley deserved their victory.

One last note is how pathetic its becoming the constant bagging of Wigan for our tackling technique. Briers tried to use it just before h/t when McLlorum was tackling Solomona whining trying to persuade alibert that he was twisting his ankle. Was nothing in it at all and it was pathetic from briers very much in the Jon Wilkin mould.

Lackluster, lethargic and lack of aggression sums it up for me. Wire were good, but thank god they weren't superb. Our poorest performance under Madge for mine.

My thoughts exactly. That should not take anything away form Wire who outclassed us pretty easily I thought.

I think this will remind people that while youngsters like Charnley can have very good games in their first full season in the first 17 when it comes to the big games against the better sides experience counts for a lot.

He went for two balls on the last tackle that had he let the winger take there was nothing on. He should have tackled the player having let him take the kick and the pass. This just shows his inexperience with him not reading the game well and that is all it is, inexperience. It would be criminal if he go labelled as Ainscough MkII in the back of that game.

It's also when the situation with Gleeson shows how it hurts the team. It's one thing to have to cope with Richards out but that is sport, injuries happen, but its galling to think we were fielding another inexperienced player needlessly.

I don't think there are many positive to take form a Wigan point of view but I think Amos needs to start next week at 1. He looked fully fit and quite sharp but only came on to give Finch a rest so it wasin't even a tactical substitution to change things around IMO. Sam at 1 has run its course for me.

Agreed

Don't forget we're missing King, Atkins, Anderson and Riley. There's 4 of our starting lineup.

Either way the return game will be another great advert for RL I'm sure!