To me it was as if the Wigan lads decided to metaphorically stick the V's up at Wayne's coaching book and turned to natural "play what's in front of you" rugby. Keeping the ball alive and running instinctively.

I very much doubt Sam's poor performances had anything to do with Wane's coaching. In previous weeks Sam has not taken on the line like he used to, he was happier to just play like a link and pass the ball on. This week against you he seemed to be much more up for taking on the line, his pace seemed to be coming back a bit, as well as his step.

But I don't believe for one minute that Wane told Tomkins to not use his running game. I think he's just coming back from his injury, and people didn't realise how long it would take for him to recover properly.

You're focusing on one player. I'm talking about the entire team.

With 20 seconds left to go in the 1st half Sam seemed to give me the vibe of "give me the jeffing ball I'm gonna go for it." Now whether or not that was fingers up to the move is anyones guess but the adversity of the second half gave me the same impression, I think they used the standard set plays to get the good territory but the finishing seemed to be off the cuff, comparered to the usual kick to nothing short range kicks, imho

I'm convinced Sam is playing with an injury picked up in the regular season home fixture against Wakey (The last minute win game). He hasn't been as effective since and Wane has mentioned that he's not been training. There were a few rumours at the time that it could have been a season ending injury and in an interview today Wane has said his foot is troubling him.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to see him missing the four nations for an op at the end of the season.

Reminded me of another classy player tossing the boring play book out of the window when the side was up against it. Trent Barrett, Wigan V Bradford, result Wigan 31, Bradford 30.

The idea that we threw our playbook out of the window after Flower was sent off just isn't true.

Charnley's second try and Tierney's second try were scored off the back of familiar plays - they were just executed very well.

Stop allowing facts get in the way of a good conspiracy theory!!

Correct. We simply played with more urgency in all areas of our game which seemed in increase the speed of our play and our accuracy.

I'm hoping that come that semi final we will be at full throttle from minute one.

I still think the biggest difference was we started to offload. It offered a bit of variety and made the defence think a bit more, they had more to worry about than a set play. I think it was the offloads which allowed the set plays to be more effective than they have been this year.

That is true. There were some crackers from Tautai, Frank-Paul and Bateman.