No one is mentioning King in the same sentence as Wardle... Now Keighran is another matter.....King played far better for us than what's being served up now. He was alot more dangerous in attack and made plenty meters etc

We monitor our players scientifically so we know how fatigued they are. Sooner or later our schedule was bound to catch up with us, it did today. In my view, and I know it is easy to be clever after the event, we should have rested the likes of Thompson, Havard, Farrell and Ellis. We need those four firing on all cylinders when it matters. Dupree, Eseh, Chan and Hill should have been in our 17 along with Byrne and Mago who have both played limited minutes.

Wigan were pretty good in TL and Lockers early days here, but we've lost good players (French, O'Neil etc) and are struggling. Your point is?

So Phuzzy…about our attacks. It’s amazing what happens when a team defends properly against you



Sorry couldn’t resist- was an open goal after what we have been discussing. I was at Wembley yesterday so couldn’t believe it when I saw the result.

Smith should cop a ban now which makes next week more interesting. The MRP on Monday is going to be very interesting for both sides. If it goes as expected there’ll be 0/4 first choice halfbacks for both sides and only 2/8 spine players. Saw that on Twitter and it’s a mad stat.

Wardle is a centre and King isn’t.
Wardle has pace, good footwork, calmness under pressure and a great passing game. King can trundle it in. I mention Wardle because he is what I consider a centre, a top centre.
If we had signed King which player(s) would we have not signed(over and above Keighran) or been unable to improve their terms?

Some might say (with hindsight) that Chan and Hampshire have not exactly been money well spent this year but it's irrelevant anyway as King was under contract with Warrington.

Peet obviously doesn’t think that Eseh and Chan are ready and possibly may never be ready. Hill looks really slow this season and maybe it’s just a case of a second year performance after a very encouraging first season. Mago is just Mago. Seemingly incapable of playing for periods longer than 15 minutes and doesn’t appear to be any fitter nearly 3 years after joining us. His main attribute of off loading has almost disappeared and his deficiencies in defence are still there. Byrne is an enigma. Giant of a man but his main attribute is his defensive work with very little impact with ball in hand.
Depth of the squad was our mantra from the very outset this season with a few already saying that we don’t need any new blood in the squad for next season. The last few weeks would suggest that maybe the strength in depth from a qualitative perspective is just a fallacy. Of the new signings for 2024 only Thompson has looked like a really good acquisition. I still have high hopes for Walters, Eseh and Hill but maybe for the longer term rather than here and now.
I hope that Peet can steady the ship and get the season back on track. He gets the vast majority of calls correct so for me we have to accept that occasionally he will get it wrong but hopefully he and the team will learn from it.
Smith will probably gain from the rest that his suspension will bring and it will be interesting to see how young Farrimond will cope with the additional responsibilities.
Will be interesting to see how we react next weekend.

I will wade in here. I was gutted when King left and since watching Keighran i am even more gutted. Hope we can get him back somehow. Miski was 100 times better with King too.

We were awful Stu but I hardly think it was an "open goal", as you put it. You can't take 1 game and say it proves something about another. That's like saying the away defeat against Hull KR proved we couldn't win in the CC semi just a couple weeks later. Saints attack has been awful for a couple of seasons. Wigan's hasn't. It's all very admirable Matt Peet taking a "no excuses" approach but anyone thinking 3 games in 10 days at the back end of a long season didn't have a major impact on that performance needs to have their bumps felt. We were already in a dip of form prior to it so it doesn't take a genius to work out that it isn't exactly going to help matters!

Next week you start favourites for mine. I was already of that opinion anyway as we're all aware of the quality of performance we get the week after Easter (which is essentially what Wigan have just had) and yesterday's performance confirmed it. We have fallen off a cliff and the loss of Smith's kicking game will mean we can't even play behind that. Put it this way; if you don't even take your chance this weekend, I doubt we'll have much to fear come the playoffs!

Talking of which, I think we'll be back on song come October. Are you bold enough to disagree?

Not sure how you work out we will start as favourites? I bet the bookies won’t have us as favourites- pardon the pun

We’ll have Welsby, Lomax, Dodd, Knowles and Batchelor out. Matautia is a chance I believe and that’s not even including Hurrell and Delaney

Also we keep being told that Wigan have the best squad in the comp. You signed about 10 props for a start. It’s on Peet for not rotating better. Farrimond was soon back to the Reserves after a couple of cameos but will now no doubt play next week.

It’s interesting how much Wigan fans argue against the one man team jibe yet they’ve lost 3 from 5 with no French and arguably only beat us because of the sheer number we had out.

We are 2 from 2 with no Welsby (I accept one was Hull)

And yes if I had to bet on a team winning the GF to save my life I’d still bet on Wigan but they’ve got to get back to form quickly and keep French fit

The reason I think that is not because of who the respective teams have out (which is similar anyway) but because Wigan are gassed and Saints aren't. Think back to your post WCC victory form. The bookies had Saints favourites for most of those games but anyone with a pair of eyes could see you were gassed. It's been remarkable that we've not had a dip before now but it had to come sooner or later. This latest run has pretty much finished the job.

French is important to us. Of course he is. It would be daft to suggest otherwise. But to say this latest run proves anything more is just more conflating. We've won plenty without him too. Did that prove he was irrelevant? The truth, as ever, lies somewhere between. We miss him when he's not there as any team would but to somehow conflate that into being a one man team is nonsense. We're better with him as any team is better with their best players playing. It's a team sport though, and no player is a team. Not French, not Welsby, not Mikey Lewis. However, they do of course make a difference.

You're right on squad rotation and I think Matty Peet needs to hold his hand up here. We've flogged Thompson, Harvard (since his return), Farrell, Nsemba (taking his age into account), Ellis, Smith, Wardle, Marshall and Miski. I could show you a text to my mate complaining of this from several weeks ago. We're reaping the effects of this now. So much so I would advocate wholesale changes for a couple of weeks even if it means losses. Put the LLS to bed, otherwise we risk having a proper crack at the big one.