Quote ShortArse="ShortArse"once again Dave you choose entirely to misread someone elses post. please read carefully what i said and do not add your own interpolation to suit your own agenda. the only conclusion from your post is that you are unable to read someone else thoughts in an impartial way.'"
I replied to exactly the points you made. I suggest you re-read your own post.
Quote ShortArse1 the topic of the post was squad rotation, not the de-ification of SW. at no point have i said that SW was blameless, just that he is being cast as a pariah for winning the LLS and losing narrowly to a champion outfit in 2 semis.'"
You said "If I were to put the blame on anyone last year it would be on the senior players not him."
You never actually mentioned the LLS or that he was being cast as a pariah at all !!!
Quote ShortArse2 the thrust of my argument is that the marquee players are MORE culpable than SW for the NARROW losses to Leeds. i have never said that SW was blameless. the point of big name players is that they stand up at the key points in the season, Lima did this when we won the CC. Finch did this in the run in to the GF win. However, last season, once they had sorted out their futures, their form dipped badly. We've seen it before from imports and we shall see it again. It is very difficult for teams to cover this kind of drop in form from players who are SUPPOSED to be the leaders. It doesnt matter who the coach is, if the players hunger has gone NO ONE will motivate them.'"
What you did was come up with a series of excuses to exonerate Wane as you are doing here. This bit "It doesnt matter who the coach is, if the players hunger has gone NO ONE will motivate them!" is complete and utter nonsense. It is his job to deal with that.
There is also of course the fact it is only your opinion that Lima and Finch were already on the plane not a fact. While Lima's form dipped there is was nothing to suggest Finch gave anything less than 100% and I think it it's completely disingenuous of you to suggest otherwise.
Quote ShortArse3 please read my post. the loss in the SF to leeds i said was down to us losing to a better team. this happens in cup comps. no conspiracy. no rant at ST, who played appallingly to gift leeds possession and tries. they won fair and square.'"
You ignored the team selection Wane made for that game. There was plenty of debate on here about Lockers out of position and that it would be a mistake to play him at 6. One of the reasons Leeds were a better team was down to Wane's team selection. In fact IMO Wane dealt with the loss of Tommy particularly badly.
Quote ShortArse4 accordingly to you, a team should never have dips in form. they should continue to win regardless. as i stated, we hit our purple patch mid season. this happens throughout a season. i suspect that you are the only person that blames the coach for not being able to maintain probably the best run of form in 15 years. the good thing about the final third was that we continued to win, despite not being on top form.
'"
I don't accord any such thing. I do understand the coach has a big influence over how the team plays.
Quote ShortArse5 if you read my comments regarding the play off, you will see that I again blame no individuals. if we had been given the penalty with a minute to go, which the ref could easily have done, we would not be having this conversation. the play-offs are a cup competition, and whilst we could have played better and not let the ref be the decider of the game, it all came down to 2 judgement calls. as for the blooding of the rookie FB, i dont recall that it was any of his mistakes that led to leeds scoring, so why single him out ?'"
Er... Murphy was at fault for two of their tries but he shouldn't have been on the pitch. Plenty of debate about that team selection as well but that isn't the point as it is just one example that shows Wane has a much greater influence over how the team plays than you make out.
Quote ShortArse1 SW in his first season in charge did i good job of rotating the squad. by no means perfect but a lot better than MM did the previous 2 seasons
2 it was SWs first season, and given the expectations at the start of the year, he did pretty well. in fact, lets be honest, his performance was as good as any of our coaches bar MM since the advent of SL.
3 the senior pros let us down badly in the big games. Finch, Lima and Sam all were very disappointing.
4 Losing Tommy was huge. It was only in his absence that we truly appreciated his impact.
5 Losing to leeds in cup matches is no disgrace, as they have proved to be the best in SL. they even raised their game again last Friday to give the Aussies a real good fight.'"
And I disagree with all of them. He didn't do a good job rotating the squad. He cocked it up. The fact it was his first season is irrelevant as is being as good as anyone bar MM. Being Wigan coach is not the place for on the job training and what he clearly decided do was change the way the team played compared to Madge which is IMO his biggest mistake of the lot. Instead of continuity he changed things completely. The senior pros did not let us down badly and Wane made a right mess of handling Tommy's injury. And finally while losing is no disgrace that doesn't mean Wane didn't contribute to the losses.
There is one point you have failed to mention though and that is this. If you are going to say this:
"If I were to put the blame on anyone last year it would be on the senior players not him."
then it must follow that it was down to the players and not Wane that the team played as well as it did early in the season and won the LLS.
Now I don't think it is as black and white as that but with you it seems to me Wane gets all the credit for what was good about last season and none of the blame for what was bad about it.
