Man and ball, man and ball, man and ball....it was drummed into us. Clamp that ball. Ain't rocket science...done us today!
From cruising to losing. From Smith kicking out on the full we were clueless and out enthused and out energised. Can't play as bad again - I hope..

I don’t think we played bad, as such but we were so dumb. The tactic of constantly high balling the left edge was bizarre. I get going there a few times but all match…when they look rock solid in the air….bizarre.




We had enough opportunities to be a few scores up in the first half with the errors Leigh made and simply couldn’t because we lacked athleticism/enthusiasm.


When Farrimond broke on the right edge after the contact from Keighran when he got run down Leeming was the only Wigan shirt anywhere near him, the left edge didn’t even push at all. The result was Leeming scooting sidewards then backwards to find support then putting in a drop off which Havard just looked at as it hit the floor. 


Really poor.

Absolutely. That was a try that should have scored after the initial break. I couldn't believe there was no-one there for Leeming!

Hugely worrying that, for me. The sheer lack of desire or effort. 

We completely fell off in that second half. Best team won, no doubts about it. I thought we'd just about win it, but after Smith's attempted 40/20 went out on the full, momentum swung in Leigh's favour and Wigan never recovered from that.


Keighran has shoulders of granite; some of the shots he dished out were unreal. He absolutely flattened Niu and snatched the ball to make a break. Byrne put in a great tackle, too. It's a shame those moments of brutal defence resulting in the ball being spilt weren't rewarded with points due to the poor attacking options. 

Better to get the bad run out of the way now , Wigan will still be the team to beat come play off time and I cant see any other team having the marbles on the day to beat them . Even a poor Wigan can grind out the win against top opponents , whereas a team like Hull KR would need everything to go right , a few favourable calls and a poor wigan to beat them.

First half we were decent (not great but much more solid than previos games) second half when Leigh put us under preseeure we fell apart, we were massivly out-emthused.Watching i don't think Junior should have come back after the HIA as he was barely in the game after that.


Our halves were poor - Smith is going through the motions at present his kicking is so predictable, Farrimond apart from a few scoots looks a bit lost - not really sure what he is trying to do. Ellis looks really slow taking the ball in as well. Can't figure out what we are doing when we have the ball on the opposition line as we look totally lost with no clear plan of how to score, our only try was individual good work from Wardle rather than any team play.


Our subs bench offered litle to nothing either.

I thought we started well with far more movement and intent to run the ball out from our half, we made it harder to defend instead of using the dull 1 out carries we've had recently.  We were far more aggressive in defence.   It's usually a good indicator when we start like this that our attitude is good and we're likely to win........


But, I thought both Liam and Abbas looked like they were at 80% and still nowhere near fitness.    It would have been interesting to see what Wade could have made of those chances out wide in the first half - but i think he would have struggled with the carries off our line - on balance probably the wrong game to make his debut.   


As others mentioned, we seemed to lack some support play when we did make breaks  - it' was almost as though it wasn't in the game plan to make breaks from our half so the other edge were still expecting a defensive play.


Which leads me onto the 2nd half........ we went back into our shells and reverted back to playing non attacking rugby with the same predictable last play from Smith the the high kick into the corner.   I don't understand why we continue to use the same tactics Huddersfield used against us in the CC final at Spurs.    I know Peet's strategy is to work hard, tire the opposition and put on points later  - but I'm pretty sure the only attacking move we put on in the 2nd half was in the final 5 minutes when Field made a half break on the LHS.     


We have the players in Field, Junior, Wardle, Marshall, Farrimond, Mago and Smith to open teams up on the outside or inside yet this season we have very rarely shown the desire to even try - apart from the Vegas game when we clearly went there with the intention to entertain and attack.  Why are we continually leaving it so late to start even thinking about attacking - doesn't really make sense when we have so many strike players and we are making it easy for fit teams to defend against us.   We can no longer rely on being the fittest team to stay in the grind and bank on scoring tries in the last 10 mins.


Still confident in Peet but I do feel we need to tweak our game plan.

Not sure if Havard doesn't trust his hamstring yet but he's just trundling the ball up at the minute, poor by the standards we know he's got in him.
Can't for the life of me understand the decision to play Marshall, bet good money he's out for a month now, fair play to him for sticking the 80mins out but that was a bad call.
Congratulations to Leigh, the decisive try deserved to win any game, top quality play

Came away happier with that last night than any of the last 3 games, even though we won 2 of those. The intent and energy was really good first half and obviously the second half was disappointing but it felt like we ran out of energy, with a number of players nursing knocks. 

It's been a poor spell, no doubt about it but we'll be ok. Hopefully we can build some confidence at home, hang on to that second spot and you're two games away from another title. In those big play off fixtures, I have total faith in this group of players. 

I don't get the fake positivity here. We are in a much worse position now than at this point last year, and not just because of trophies. It's actually quite astonishing how quickly we've gone backwards. Smith and Wardle's chase back for Ipape's try was utterly embarrassing.

Last night and the previous few games have been an absolute chore to watch. Yes there were a few good tackles but god knows what Tommy Leuluai actually does all week, whether he just shouts "pass it to Bevan" and "pass it to Jai" I don't know?


Getting knocked out of the cup and not having to 'peak' for the WCC was meant to be a benefit, and focus us for a strong league season. The LLS is probably out of reach now when, with a little bit of effort and playing at maybe 65% rather than 10% could've got us there. Instead it'll give HKR more confidence that they're the better team.



We also used to relish these bunch of away games as a challenge and an opportunity to go around half of SL and turn teams over in their own stadium. Now all of a sudden it's "let's get back to playing at home where we are comfortable". What has changed?