And if William the Conqueror was still king, Prince Harry wouldn't be embarrassing the nation nightly for the entertainment of his new American friends, as someone would have been sent to kill him.

But he isn't. And neither is Maurice, and even if he was, he's now 80 years old.

Revising history serves no purpose here.

Maurice was great in a non-salary cap era. But he was hopeless during his second stint. Even with Whelan in charge, a guy who could have run the club with his small change, they managed to comprehensively botch it.

You’ve missed the point.

He’s not wishing for Mo to be back. He’s saying IL should have some backbone like Mo and pull the trigger like Mo would have done.

Weird isn't it how some conveniently miss this little nugget out. Not only did they botch it (and nearly killed our club in the process) they had also blatantly overspent on the cap by fiddling the books. They both then compounded this by overspending even more to avoid relegation before chucking their cards in the year after.

Edit - That doesn't mean I don't agree with showing some ML ruthlessness for a change.

Rightly, or wrongly IL doesn't sack coaches mid season. He certainly doesn't sack coaches who've won 7/8 games.

I'm not a Lam fan and I want him out, but that's at the end of the year. Sacking a coach is a gut reaction and thankfully IL isn't that stupid. The next coach appointment is hugely important, not only from a recruitment POV but also making sure we have the right guy to look after a talented group of youngsters.

It needs to be done from a position of strength and after a hell of a lot of due diligence.

My personal view is that Lam has had his chance. Despite the games we've won, I don't know any honest fan who feels we've been playing well.

I know he's had challenges to deal with, not least Covid, and a lot of untimely and serious injuries to key personnel, but that could happen to any team and frequently does.

However, I totally agree with you that replacing a coach cannot be done in anger. All that would happen if IL sacked Lam today is that we'd end up with a very inexperienced assistant coach running a team that has been decimated by injury. That would be a recipe for total disaster. Some might argue that he should try to do what Maurice did with Noble, but which coach in SL at present is even close to enjoying the rep that Brian Noble did?

For me, IL needs to do another 'Michael Maguire', i.e take his time to source an exceptional talent in the NRL and persuade him to come over here ... and that's going to take a while.

Perhaps in the meantime, he can look to make some astute signings. I'm not saying stars, as that would cost us a lot and probably couldn't happen until the end of the year anyway. But it must be clear to both him and KR that the current team is nowhere near good enough man-for-man. The injuries to key men has made it look worse than it is, but there are big gaps in that line-up, and they need filling quickly.

Is anybody going to give Catalan any credit for how they played? Yes Wigan were poor, error strewn and undisciplined but they were bloody good.

Careful for what you wish for. Ian Lenagan has always come across, to me, as a forward thinking chairman and owner with the club’s best interests at heart. There have been a few bad decisions over the years, namely the Millwall and Australia episodes of taking ‘home’ fixtures elsewhere but, on the whole, he is a person you would wish to have in charge, rather than not. This is backed up quite clearly by the number of trophies brought to the club during his tenure.

Yesterday was e with a capital s and yes, recent performances have papered over the cracks to what, on paper, was a decent enough start to the season, Challenge Cup aside. But, to give a bit of balance, the general opinion on here only a few weeks ago was that, if we have a Walmsley at prop, we win the GF rather than finish as runners up.

For me, we have two main problems. Firstly, a manager/head coach who has probably taken us as far as he can and, secondly, a weak and inexperienced pack that needs beefing up considerably. After coming so close last year, it’s hard to take. We’ll have to write this year off, that’s now a given but it’s not the end of the world. The club is still in good shape.

As always there is no simple remedy to our problems, at least not this season. We are a completely unbalanced side partly because of poor decision making and partly bad luck.
We do not seem to have a working recruitment structure. Too often our top dollar signings have not worked. We took a risk on Burgess and we are still paying for it. We have papered over the cracks, in the past, by bringing young talent through, unfortunately we are now losing players just as they start to mature.
We have been unlucky at times. We ended up with Hardaker, Field and French, all on good money I assume, when most of us thought that French would have been gone by now. That left us short in the centres.
Now we look like a team of utility players. Any team would be happy to have Smithies, Shorrocks, Partington and Isa, just not all on the pitch at the same time. We are now so one dimensional that young players cannot get a run out in their best position and if they did they could not shine within our structure.
It is clear that little can be done this season give the cap but by the end of the season we will be in a position have shed five props, possibly two centres, one halfback, one hooker, a second row and possibly a couple of others. The test will be of how well we handle that. My worry is that Tony Clubb might get another contract simply because the others look worse.

Undoubtedly. They ran red hot and we hit a real low.

Sadly (& this isn't a dig at IL), a lot of the Wigan Catalan contingent should arguably still be here.

I do think that, as a club, we're too obsessed or focused on the "next big thing" and certainly, from a prop POV, we're too quick to cut players that still have a use.

As a side note, I've seen posters calling for Byrne to be dropped or let go. I really hope that we don't do that. He's going to be a very good player, but needs time to develop into the player he's going to be. Our loss will be another's sides gain in a few years.

Fully agree. The young lads in the pack have played superbly this season, more so in defence than attack, but have finally run out of steam. They should have been rested now and again and helped along by our more experienced lads but that has not been possible. Clark may as well not be here, Bullock has not progressed from last season (in fact he’s gone backwards) and Singleton is a shadow of the player we saw last year.

In the 2nd half Catalans were great. In the 1st half they missed at least 4 scoring opportunities. Should have been 60+ at least.

Catalans were very good, as they were last week. Always difficult place to go to granted however we should be looking to at least compete with them.

This season we have been guilty of allowing inferior opposition to have far too much possession and scores. First game of the season we allowed Leigh to get into an 18nil lead, okay we luckily won the game but Leigh shouldn't have been allowed to get into that position. We were lucky against Salford and Hull (league) and have been walking a tightrope for weeks. Even York gave us a game for a good hour.

Our two biggest games so far this season we have failed miserably.

Not yet played Saints & Wire which is a scary thought.