It's interesting the way the goalposts have now shifted from 'Wigan were lucky because the officials are corrupt' to 'Wigan were lucky because Catalan were total crap'.

I'm just wondering which one you guys are eventually going to settle on?

Perhaps you can point me in the direction of my post about the officials being corrupt, I must be sleep-posting.

If you look at the nature of most of the tries scored on Sunday, and Catalans general commitment and execution after the first 15 minutes or so, you'll see why some people are criticising their performance.

Wigan exploited the situation perfectly, and you can only beat what's in front of you, but Catalans were very poor and unfortunately put in a hapless performance in keeping with all of the teams now out of the play-offs.

It's been a pretty dreadful standard of rugby so far and extremely dull.

I'm not talking about you personally. Perhaps I should have made that point, so I apologise. But we had a glut of Saints and Wire fans on here yesterday talking crap about corrupt officials, cheating barstewards etc.

I don't disagree with your point about the standard of play-off rugby being generally low. And I will admit to being baffled as to why Catalan got so tired so quickly. They got pounded by Wigan in the first half, but I don't think that totally explains it.

Ah OK, I haven't read through everything. I think Catalans had a couple of tough calls, but I thought the ref in general was terrible to be honest, big errors against and in favour of both teams and AGAIN we see a ref officiating a game in a completely different way to how he did just a week earlier.



They did get pounded by Wigan, but they were gone within 10 minutes and again within a few minutes of half time. Credit to Wigan for their ruthlessness, but Catalans didn't turn up and the scoreline reflects that. At the risk of sounding racist [and no this isn't a Ryan Bailey comment
The play-offs have been REALLY disappointing. I just hope Saints and Leeds can turn up and compete next week or the whole thing will have been an abject waste of time and horrible TV, albeit likely to end with a phenomenal final.

Come on folks....lets have some reality, after some silly my dads harder than your dad posts!! Lets forget about all the other games this season....next weekend is a Wigan v St Helens derby match!!!! Not only is it a derby match, but its a play-off semi-final derby match, which equals one humdinger of a bone crunching, high intensity game, for which all other games results mean nothing!!! I already have my tickets and cant wait.....its going to be a cracker!!! Good luck to both teams, its going to be a game that will be a positive advert for the game of Rugby League!!! And im going to be a lucky man to be there to see it!!!

Nervous already, and cant call it!!!
Matt

IMO the reality is we were pap against Saints and they beat us by 8, Catalan were nearly as pap against us last night and we beat them by 44.

We were'nt awesome as some are making out but we showed signs of what we are capable of and made a massaive improvement on the week before.

Saturday will be a great Derby game and I think at this stage it can't be called. POTENTIALLY we are miles better than Saints but will their week off help them or hinder them??

Either way I am mega excited for Saturday and counting down the sleeps already.

to be fair, i'm not sure many wiganers can honestly say that they thought we'd be in this position before yesterdays' game.

in round 1 of the play offs we played pretty badly IMO against saints and were beaten by only 8 points. now we have the monkey of the "mental fatigue" off our backs i feel following yesterdays good performance; we have very little to prove and very much to look forward to.

there is no pressure on wigan to do anything else in the play offs if you ask me and many will be predicting a wire v saints final judging by the play off results so far. saints have it all to do in my opinion.

bring it!

This highlights the farcical nature if the playoffs. Wigan were outplayed and well beaten on their own patch (well, Dave Whelan's patch), but they get another crack at getting to the GF.

There may be something to be said for the old knockout format.

Another one who had a bad day yesterday. I'm so glad.

Old?

The lack of pace may have something to do with the achilles problem he has suffered with since last years Grand Final. Just a thought like.

You're missing the point that it was in those first 20 mins that Wigan did the groundwork for them falling off later on. It doesn't really come across in the Sky coverage just how brutal our defence was in that game. The only inkling you get is the number of their players going off injured or getting up shaken but, trust me, the defence was as agrressive (and maybe more so) than anything served up from this Wigan team this season.

Don't you think it strange that after 20 something minutes the score was 2-0? Catalans weren't 'very poor' then were they? Maybe you could do worse than take the stance that Wigan were good because they went back to doing some of the things that won us the trophy last year, as well as the CC this....unless you also accept that Saints only ever win because the opposition is poor, in which case, fine.