You are probably right, but we have a hell of a prospect in Hampshire. I just don't think he should be brought in with the kicking responsibility as well, right from the start. Interesting one for management.

It's early days yet I'd carry on working with him whilst we know Charnley's quite a poor kicker as well. Don't forget he would have needed to get all 6 for us to win

Some players would not bat an eye at having that job given to them regardless of age. The confidence of youth and all that. As you say one for the management but if he was up for it they would be daft to rule it out IMO. That is the kind of mistake I'd expect from Noble.

Quote MattyB="MattyB"Hampshire kicked 120 last season, but is this a season too soon for him? wigan.rlfans.com/news.php?readmore=3349'" He did kick 120 but that was from 179 attempts giving him about a 66% success rate and his degree of success varied quite widely (just as it has for Charnley who would most likely take over from Smith if/when someone does). I don't want to knock a young player who will still be developing physically but that at the moment is not the sort of success rate that screams "make me the first team goal kicker" even if Hampshire was deemed up to the rigours of a whole season in the first team. While that is a better rate of success than we have had from Smith so far it is probably not so great a level of improvement as to warrant overexposing Hampshire to first team games, along with adding the pressure of goal kicking on top. Particularly when we already have another first team regular who could take over or share goal kicking responsibility with Smith in the shape of Charnley. With both Harris and Deacon in the coaching setup you would hope that we can either get one of Smith or Charnley to significantly improve their accuracy or we could at least be able to work out the strengths and weaknesses of both to allow them to share the duties a la Gill and Stephenson as somebody suggested the other day.

Quote MattyB="MattyB"Hampshire kicked 120 last season, but is this a season too soon for him? wigan.rlfans.com/news.php?readmore=3349'" He did kick 120 but that was from 179 attempts giving him about a 66% success rate and his degree of success varied quite widely (just as it has for Charnley who would most likely take over from Smith if/when someone does). I don't want to knock a young player who will still be developing physically but that at the moment is not the sort of success rate that screams "make me the first team goal kicker" even if Hampshire was deemed up to the rigours of a whole season in the first team. While that is a better rate of success than we have had from Smith so far it is probably not so great a level of improvement as to warrant overexposing Hampshire to first team games, along with adding the pressure of goal kicking on top. Particularly when we already have another first team regular who could take over or share goal kicking responsibility with Smith in the shape of Charnley. With both Harris and Deacon in the coaching setup you would hope that we can either get one of Smith or Charnley to significantly improve their accuracy or we could at least be able to work out the strengths and weaknesses of both to allow them to share the duties a la Gill and Stephenson as somebody suggested the other day.

I'm sure on one of the kicks it looked like bowen was going to take it, yhink it was in the second half

Wondering how many games kicking could cost us this season unless it improves gradually

Correct. He keeps his nerve and doesn't bottle it. Same as the drop goal under immense pressure - yet he delivered. You know there were times last season when Pat's kicking was well below 80%.

Plus he's not letting his misses get to his general play either.

Please don't try and blame yesterday's loss on Smith's goal kicking. Yesterday's loss was down to: Ill-discipline, ridiculous handling errors and awful edge defence.

Get Hampshire kicking, he converted a lot at the Leeds u19 grand final and going off what I've heard he was doing this all season in the under 19s.

We took Richards for granted in the kicking department, you were classing every try as 6 points before he'd even set up for the kick.

If natty carries on missing it's gonna cost us big at some point, yeh only 3 games in but we with a good kicker we would have took the points home yesterday and not lost in the last 30 seconds by 5 points.

Quite, but there's no getting away from the fact that we are likely to convert less kicks now than before. As John Kear said on Sky last week, the trophy winning sides have an 80% kicker in their line up. Let's hope Smith turns into one.

How do you know Pat would have kicked those yesterday? He did have his off days you know. I might agree with you if Matty had been missing shockers but I reckon only one of those yesterday would you class as reasonably easy (I think it was at 16-14). Most of Wigan's tries are scored out wide and it's always hit and miss with conversions from the touchline, especially the right with a right footed kicker. Matty has shown enough bottle to be given a chance.

Why burden Hampshire with all that expectation so early in his career?

This will be the first time a lot of people on here will have known Wigan without a top class goalkicker. We just lost Pat who came in 2006, Farrell left end of 2005 and prior to him we had Frano from 1990.
That's 24 seasons with some of the best kickers this club's ever had.
Getting a top quality player who is equaly as good at goal kicking is far from easy as there are so few around.
Yes we want an 80% goal kicker of course we do. If it was as simple as that we'd have signed Foster from Bradford some time ago. Trouble is as a player he is no where near the calibre we have in the positions he plays.
It may take some time to find one in the mean time some poor sod has to take on the responsibilty and the flak that comes with it when they fall short of Pat's, Faz's and Botica's standard.
If you just look at the stats of the game we lost on goal kicks. For anyone who was there perhaps like me it seemed a bit different at the time.
We can blame Smith, the ref was mediocre at best and other reasons in the blame game.
We still let in two tries when Cas were down to 12 men. That first 15 mins we just couldn't defend our try line. Away from home you will always be vulnerable to a large penalty count, we were and invited it. Some of our handling was poor, how many crash balls this year have we dropped. The Green/Farrell crash ball was dropped, Cas got possession, gained a penalty then scored a try which was six points. How many times that move was tried, failed and the ball ended on the floor I can't remember?
You'd honestly think Cas had looked at video's of Wigan to notice that move.
These terrible opposition teams do cheat don't they?????????
We played poorly, and Cas played better and won.
Things are not too bad though. As poor as we were we outscored Cas in tries right to the end when they equalled us. We have surely two of the fastest wingmen in SL who do and will score lots of tries.
This team will get better, leadership will get better, handling will improve and the wins will come. The players are certainly good enough if they play well.
Goal kicking is a problem, we lost yesterday though through playing poorly.