my observations

1. the ref had a few shockers today.... which in theory cost wigan the game (no bias...)
2. wigan wern`t at the races the first half hour
3. wigan did not play there normal game
4. everything leeds did came off they rode their luck and at the end brian mcdermott knew this
5. ryan baily a poor player and a poor attitude
6. respect to kevin sinfield , rob burrows and ryan hall.... true proffesionals...
7. maybe wigan expected to win if they turned up....and that was their undoing


thoughts please.....

It was a 'perfect storm' for Leeds.

Wigan were poor, Leeds clicked, referee was pi$$ poor.

End result.......well, we all know that one!!!!!!

Baileys attitude nearly as poor as that of "have a coke and a smile" Hock.Never mind always next year.

Appalling ref, Leeds had the rub of the green, as said earlier, a perfect storm, but Leeds still played the right tactics and therefore won.

Exactly. Leeds werent even that good imo and only won by 9 points after being gifted 3 tries by the ref and gifted tries by mistakes aplenty from Wigan who were awful.

How the hell we were in the game after 60 minutes i will never know. If we had played Wire or Saints would have been a beating.

You have my commiserations. Leeds were really up for it and played well but three absolute shockers from Thaler (who until now I thought was having a semi reasonable season). If Alibert gets a one match ban for counting to seven, I hate to think what Thaler deserves. How hard can it be to go to a video referee on what is not convincingly a try in a Cup semi-final!

As an aside, I half thought maybe O'Loughlin should have passed to Charnley so he could get closer to the posts for the conversion whilst chasing the game in the 2nd half.

I still expect you to go on and win the Grand Final, maybe this is the impetus needed.

Too many errors in the first 30 minutes in our own 20.

Leeds were the most clinical I've seen a team in a very long time - made us pay every time we made an error.

Appalling goal line defence.

We completely went away from what we do when we got ourselves back in the game, tried to play catch-up rugby far too early. If we'd kept our structure we'd have ground our way back into the game, but every time we got a sniff we made another stupid error in the second half by throwing it about too much.

Best team won and the score flattered Wigan.

As Wane said:

"We didn't turn up today. We've defended all year better than that. But take nothing way from Leeds. They wanted it more which to me is gutting. They've some real warriors in their team."

Big matches demand big starts as our recent GF and CC wins prove. Today's start set the tone for the rest of the match unfortunately.

It's a slippery slope that starts with one deficiency in a teams performance, which eventually as the match wares on effects every facet of play. Errors, lack of possession and position, enthusiasm, composure, missed tackles. All are follow on from one and other when you don't play well.

to win a final you get the glory ! to get to the final you get the money

Wane has to take some of the blame for the fact he just has not dealt with the loss of Tommy properly at all.

Lockers is not a #6 and this has been said so many times and it also removes the best #13 in the league from his rightful position.

The debate about moving Sam to #6 has been done to death but it need not have come to that. All he had to do was recall Mellor form Widnes and that would have meant zero positional changes.

I have no idea what the reasoning is behind not recalling a number 7 when our number 7 is out injured but Wane needs to learn from this in the way he hopefully learned from making too many changes v Windes earlier in the season. He should have realised by now Lockers isn't a six and it was naive of him to think we could go into a cup semi final with the team this out of shape and a make shift stand off. Beating Wakey with a team made up like this is no indication of how they will fare in a cup semi-final.

We were that bad it is quite amazing that we only lost by 11 points. Despite us being as bad as we were just a few less individual mistakes and a pair of glasses for Thaler and we would have won the game. Leeds really should have been out of sight by half time.

Shocking defence and shocking refereeing.

You do not win a big game conceding 39 points.

Finch had a nightmare. Tuson should never start ahead of Faz and Hughes.
MM was clearly not fit.

Or maybe Wane and the coaching staff feel that Mellor isnt good enough. The fact that they havent recalled him, as well as signing Smith early, suggests that they do not. Maguire often used O'Loughlin at 6 so it is hardly nothing new and I dont recall anyone calling him naive when he did.

O'Loughlin was one of our few good performers today and looked very good at stand off. Admittedly his presence in the middle may not have helped when chasing the game as the team obviously looks much better with three pivots instead of two; however his performance today was actually quite good, just like against Wakefield and he's shown that when purely looking at the halves (i.e not taking his loss at 13 into account) he's by far the best player to use as a stand in.
However, when you do take into account what we lose at 13 it's not been ideal.

With O'Loughlin at 6 we also need our strongest pack out for most of the game which means Farrell at loose forward from the start.

Now that Matty Smith is here though it's all largely irrelevant.