Would it not be sensible for Tony Smith to start having a settled 17 from now till the end of the season? I would've thought that team that started last night will be the one Wigan face on Saturday.

Briers and Smith made it sound as if you've prepared for a two game turnaround, even though in all honesty, the turnaround isn't bad at all. It's a normal 5 days.

Should be a close one, Wigan certainly owe Wire one in the league!

Last night was a typical Wire performance, good kicking, strong forwards and pressure defence, but it didn't scare me for Saturday at all. We should have destroyed them at home earlier in the season but our own mistakes cost us big time. If we play to the best of our ability and so do Wire then we will win because we are better.

A 5 day turnaround is like a 2 day turnaround for players who are over 30.

Five days turnaround isn't normal to me, as much as eight days isn't.

I would expect Carvell to come back on Saturday.

PS

Not wanting to sound churlish, but, the game could have been a lot more physical than it was. Which is a bit of a saving grace.

I believe we are better if we have our 1st choice 17 available. Think, however, we might be a bit light in the prop department on Saturday - wouldn't be if we had a fully fit and fired up Prescott together with Lima, Mossop and Eric. All back row forwards need to assert themselves as well - Faz and Tuson as well as Hansen, Hock and SOL.

If we had a fully fit Tommy and Pat as well, I'd be even more confident - we may have lost the last few league games, but we won the one crucial game last year ( CC Quarter final).

Warrington may find it difficult to back up so soon after last night's hard game - wouldn't be the first time a team struggles to maintain performance playing 2 tough games in 5 days.

Wigan's weakness is also their strength, your rigid and well disciplined patterns.

I'm not sure who said it on boots and all that you know what Wigan are going to do but it's stopping it.
Individually man for man i think Wire have the better team but we play off the cuff which sometimes means high errors and we get punished for it.

This game is toss of the coin stuff
if we played 100 times in a season i reckon it would be 50-50, maybe the occasional draw.

With both sides at full strength, I'd agree, and I hope both sides make the GF this year. My main worry for Saturday is our goalkicking, I really think it will be that close for it to make the difference.

I think we should be targeting this game as the game to kick start our run to old trafford as I haven't been impressed with our performances at all since the exiles break, we seem to be making a few basic errors and don't seem as fluid as we have done in attack, hopefully this all changes come tea time on Saturday.

Warrington didn't raise any eyebrows last night, in fact it suggested to me that Wigan and Warrington are miles ahead of the rest, Saints where really poor, there attack is so one dimentional and I don't think they can handle a quick team in both attack and defence. Lomax is extremely overrated and doesn't seem able to grasp a game like the top half backs can.

The difference with Wigan now and the last few times we have played Warrington is that we now have a half back who has a kicking game! We have played right into warrington's hands the last few times we have played them with errors and stupid penalties. I hope we go there and play with flare and move their forwards around the park.

Unfortunately though, this game as others have said is just a 'warm up' for the playoffs and 1st means no more than 2nd come play off time.

This game will come down to whoever kicks their conversions/penalties and makes the least amount of errors

Unfortunately ill be on holiday so wont be watching but im not looking forward to finding out the result on Sunday

will be very tough match,we need to play fully fit players,no players with niggly injuries.hope we don`t kill ourselves trying to beat wire then run out of steam at end of season.

It will be a close game and as others have said goal kicking could be crucial. I could see it ending something like 4 tries each with them kicking 4/4 and us kicking 2/4. Tries tend to be scored out wide in the games between the top sides.

Some Wire fans seem to think they might rest a few, personally I can't see it but we'll still probably have 5/6 first teamers out so they can't use that excuse.

On the point of squad rotation, Tony Smith seems to have rotated his squad more than any other coach this season to keep his key players fresh. This would suggest that he thinks they didn't make the GF last season because they ran out of steam. Towards the back end of last season Warrington had 3 weekends off (CC Semi, CC Final, 2nd week of play-offs) so I would have thought they would be quite fresh going into that Leeds game. IMO the reason Wire didn't make the final last year was due to a lack of tight, high intensity games in the last 3 months of the season and they seemed to panic when they weren't 20 points clear by half time they were that used to hammering teams.

As has been said it will be tough on Sat, could go either way!