Quote: Rogues Gallery "He needs to know if some of these young players are up to it, and the only way to do it is to give them their chance in games like yesterday. '"
No its not. He had absolutely no need to put so many young players in the side at once. The idea he had to do this to see how they would go is ridiculous.
Quote: Rogues Gallery "I still think that but for the injuries to Mossop and Goulding (leaving us only two subs) the game would probably have been won, but that in many ways is taking away from a gutsy Widnes performance.
What we don't know is what the injury situation actually was going into yesterdays game. Tommy has definitely carrying a knock for about two weeks and I think Lockers also has. He played for almost half of last season carrying an injury. They were the two players we missed most yesterday.'"
The fact we let slip an 18 point lead had far more to do with the fact most of the on-field leaders were sat in the stand than anything else.
You simply can not take the leading players out and expect it to have no detrimental effect. The fact on paper Wane may have thought that team was capable of winning was very naive and not something I'd expect of a 1st grade coach. You don't just fling a team together like that and have it click and play as a team. People seem surprised we let an 18 point lead slip. Well I would be as well if it was the first team playing but given the side that was out there I don't understand why people are surprised it could not keep its composure.
It is just not on for the senior players who were out there such as Hock and Finch to be expected to carry that many inexperienced players for 80 minutes. No wonder Finch stormed off at the end. He was probably as disgusted with Wane's selection as most of the fans.
As to injuries Wane has said we had a couple but that he also wanted to play the young players which is what he did. He will hopefully have learned that all he should have done is replace the couple of injured players, not rip the backbone out of the side.