Quote: Sunshine state "Not convinced with this Wigan team, we aren't creating anything from our half backs Deacon is past it, jury still out on Finch, missing Piggy and not been replaced Joel is not the answer at centre and when George goes heaven help us!!hand on heart can anyone say they are enjoying the rugby dished up this season compared to last, we will still give them our support but we have lots of problems.'"
I think the team relies too much on sweeping cross field passing moves to score and to make breaks with little variation. It takes a lot of hard work from the outside backs and props to get the team set for an attacking move and with the team making more errors this year it means the team keep having to rebuild the platform. There doesn't seem to be anyone in the middle of the park who can make a break or create something out of nothing. Leuluai can run with ball in hand and break the line occasionally but that's usually only as a broken-field runner. Against a tight defence he's a bit more limited.
Most of Wigan's attacking threat comes at the end of a set of six as the ball goes wide to Tomkins, so a disciplined sliding defence can cover. They can also usually guess that it's Tomkins who receives the ball. Of course teams still find it hard to stop him, but they seem to be cutting out moves easier.
Handling errors are also making it harder in attack because the team has to set the platform again before trying to work the ball wide, whereas a side like Wire who use offloads as their main way through a defence can work openings down the middle as well as out wide. Add to that the fact that close to the line it seems the players want to score every time which means they tend to miss the opportunity to get repeat sets and build pressure.
As it stands when playing in the halves neither Leuluai, Deacon nor Finch really pose a threat running with the ball so perhaps a strike player in the halves would add a threat with ball in hand down the middle and give teams another player to worry their defences.