Getting to your fourth Grand Final in a row is a great achievement for any coach. Although we have lost the last two no-one could argue that we were comprehensively beaten in either. With luck we might even have won two out of the three.

Those who argue that winning is all and that getting to a final and losing counts for nothing are taking a rather narrow view of what constitutes success in sport.

This season has been a disaster regarding injuries. From losing Sam for the first half of the season and then losing Micky Mac after just two games to losing Lockers for most of the season. Our three most influential players out. Even stalwart experienced performers like Joel and Faz missed most of the season. And to top it off, a self inflicted wound, with our best performer by a mile suspended for eight games.

No coach would have been able to come up with the last 4 performances at the business end of the season like Waney has done at Warrington, Hull, home to Catalans and home to Hull. The ability to drag performances out of kids is frankly, amazing. They look like they would die for the shirt rather than miss a tackle.

If you said before the season that a team missing Sam Tomkins, Manfredi, McIlorum, Lockers, Clubb, Mossop and Joel Tomkins would have got to the Grand Final and having beaten Saints, Hull twice and Warrington in the last month or so be in with a chance of beating Warrington I wouldn't have believed you.

Players like Powell, Smith and Sarginson have confounded their critics time and again in the last month.

Win or lose on Saturday - these lads and Shaun Wane have done us proud.

+1

Now now AOP..... You know the rules, its all poop!!! Get with the program, and get miserable and negative!!!!

I agree that to win this grand final would be a great achievement given the injuries we have endured. However, we have played some awful attacking rugby this year and Wane really is due to win us a major trophy given his general lack of success in this area, both in terms of close grand final/semi final losses to Saints, Leeds and Hull FC, and less respectable cup exits to Cas and Hull KR, so I wouldn’t go as far as you have in my praise. I would hope the club are at least considering bringing in an attacking coach or Director of Rugby for next season regardless of Saturday's result

That could only help.

It's an odd position for the chairman to be in really. We've had a disappointing season in many ways, and yet we're back at Old Trafford again. It's very difficult to argue that a coach who can get you within sniffing distance of glory nearly every year that he's in charge is not making a pretty good fist of his job.

As would those who think getting to a final is the be all and end all and the rest of the season is incidental.

We have had stronger and weaker teams all through the season and the performances have been naff for the most part and have cost us the LLS and resulted in another exit from the Challenge Cup. So if Wane is responsible for the performances to get us to the GF in recent weeks what was he up to for the rest of the season? The fact an injury hit team has played as it has recently undermines the injury excuse. Why not before?

I agree with Grimmy, something has to change whatever happens in the GF as the problem with the attack has not just been this season. It has declined three seasons in a row and you could reasonably argue it was a factor in last seasons narrow loss to Leeds when we had them under the cosh at one stage and let them off the hook.

Well who'd have thunk it !

FWIW - Win this Saturday and IMO it will be the Best Championship/League against the odds win we will have had since Mission impossible 91.
Every one of those Naff performances where we had between 6 & 12 players out yet still managed to scrape wins will have played a major part in our achievement.
I tend to try and take positives and each one of those wins, which in isolation we in most cases had no right to win those games, has given this set of players something you can't coach, the ability to win against the odds, never say die attitude etc.
Even though I agree the expected upturn in performances that I expected didn't happen, without those wins earlier in the season we would not have been in the position to win those Super8 & Play off games.

Whether you want to credit the players, the coaches, the club
Or
Whether you want to criticise the players, the coach, the club

Nobody surely can deny it is a remarkable achievement to be in this position given the consistent decimation of the team through injury and dare I say suspension throughout the season.

Well said.
It'll be up there with anything this club has ever achieved even going back to the 1950 Championship Final at Main Road when we beat Huddersfield with eight Wigan players on the way to Australia for the test series.

It's such a confusing season to summarise really. I was one of the people on here that banged away for months saying 'everything will be ok when we get a strong team back on the park' but we then did and if anything our form dropped off!! We then lost some more players and our form has picked up again.

The spirit has been amazing and Wane must take huge credit for that. The mentality of the players when their backs are against the wall has been superb and it's a real strength of Shaun Wanes. He seems to build up this culture of 'us against the rest' and with that also comes a bit of stubborness that he is right and he doesn't need any support.

The one thing the past month has done for me is put to bed any doubts that Wane should leave the club at the end of the year. I wouldn't be against an attacking coach coming in though to offer some support. The club and Wane should always look at ways of improving and whilst this could be a perfect end to the season, it hasn't been a perfect season by any means (and I'm sure Wane and the players are aware of that).

A win on Saturday would be very special though and it would be his greatest achievement without doubt. He won the LLS in 2012 and then the double in 2013 but you always got the sense that people still gave Maguire a lot of credit for those successes. This would be Wanes without any shadow of a doubt and will top anything that has gone before in the superleague era.

Good post. I've been as negative as they come, and I still have my opinions. I've never doubted he gets us fired up, we have heart and spirit by the bucket full. For me though, we have massively underperformed for the majority of the season, regardless of injuries. If there were the usual strong teams we would not be in the final, it's only the fact that SL is at an all time low, that a team so poor in attack with so many injuries can finish second and get to the GF.

This takes nothing away from the players, they have been up against it all season with injuries and dare I say, the tactics they seem to have been forced to stick with all year. They've had no choice but to be good in defence because or attack has been so drab and predictable. It's only now that we've binned it that the players are allowed to express themselves and play some rugby and look like they enjoy it. It's testament to the teams heart and defensive efforts that we've got there because it sure as hell isn't our attacking prowess.

All that said, no way can he be sacked, however I hope to God he has learned lessons this year, he's learned what works defensively and hopefully he's learned what definitely doesn't work in our attack.

Is it? I happen to agree, but if you lose on Saturday and then lose the next 2 Grand Finals as well, will reaching 6 grand finals in a row still be a great achievement or will you make up a song about it?

To expect champagne rugby with a team missing it's best players is asking too much. The team have exceeded what a lot of fans thought they could achieve. We have lost games we should have won and the won games we had no right to. The team has fought to get to the play offs. And if you look objectively at the performances has produced it's best rugby when needed in the must win games.

I would sooner be going to the GF having played our best rugby of the season at the right time of the season, than being happy making the top eight.

Good question (honest). I guess we'll have to get back to you in two years' time.

I never expected champagne rugby, I expected us to look like we had a clue how to move the ball around and open up a defence, something we were a long way from for a lot of this season. As I say, I'm hoping lessons have been learned.