Rogues Gallery:Phuzzy:Stu M:
I turned off at HT and went on Red Vee to say that Wigan were winning the lot again and that HKR are the only team that can get close to them. Obviously that aged well.
I've said before that I think the pitch will be a huge problem to Wigan and I stand by that. There seemed to be sand in a lot of places and it is not conducive to the style of rugby you play. It makes you wonder if it has impacted on Field doing his hamstring. When you played in Vegas on that 3G style pitch it was like watching it on fast forward.
There's a saying you often hear which I'll paraphrase here: No one can stop Wigan but Wigan themselves and that very much applies in this instance. Without taking anything away from Hull who were excellent in that second half and were good enough to exploit the weaknesses presented to them, I think we could play that game another hundred times and not lose it from the position we were in at half time.
Everything that could be done wrong, we did wrong. The coaching staff, who have been exemplary for almost 2 years, got it wrong following the Field injury and everything snowballed from there. This is not hindsight. I said it at the game. I've posted elsewhere that we ended up with Eckersley, who's not really a winger, Farrell, who's not really a centre (let alone a right sided one!) and a one legged Keighran, who's not really a half all defending alongside each other and being covered by a fullback who hasn't played the position in around a year and, if rumours are to be believed, hadn't trained all week. All because one player went off! I'm not sure we could have got that any more wrong.
You're probably right about the pitch as Barron for Hull also went off with a tight hamstring but regardless of that we should have comfortably seen that game out.
On a positive note though, I'm actually less bothered about this loss than I thought I would be. I said before the season started that another clean sweep wasn't really on the cards. The last 6 trophies on the bounce is a great record but it was never going to be 9. This loss should work in our favour with regards to taking out the Grand Final again and, ultimately, that is the one I think we all want. I'm not saying we'll win it. As we've just seen, anything can happen on the day, but I do believe this ultimately puts us in a stronger position to make it 3 in a row.
I agree. Another thing that's gone unmentioned is the loss of Ellis late on. I think Hull scored two tries after he went off?
The coaching team got their substitutions wrong, but as my dad god rest his soul used to say "The man who never made a mistake never made anything."
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but Peet could have brought Leeming on either at #6 or #13 just add a bit more pace particularly in the defensive area to target Sezer who was given a free reign particularly in the 2nd half.
I'm not sure about the pitch being a factor though, Fields hamstring injuries have come previously at Leeds, Leigh and Wembley.
It'll be interesting to see if there are any charges regarding the Rapana tackle on Keighran, had there been a video ref at the game I'm sure it would have been looked at.
I was going to mention Ellis too as it definitely compounded the problems at the back end of the game but I thought the roll was already on at that point. Had he stayed on the field we might have held on but the mistakes were made earlier.
I think Leeming to 6, French to fullback and everyone else staying the same was the way to go. That would have massively helped our defensive structures and retained some sort of running threat from standoff. To put it in it's most simplistic terms, Leeming has more of the French attributes at standoff that Keighran on 2 legs, never mind the 1 legged version! It would also have allowed for Eckersley and AK to switch in defense if necessary. Given we had Forber on the bench it almost seems like a no brainer to me and I can't for the life of me work out what the thinking was behind all the positional swaps we made just to end up with a completely unbalanced right side. Strange.
As you say, the coaching staff have plenty credit in the bank and there's no such thing as someone who gets everything right. Let's just hope the necessary lessons are learned going forward.
