Well done Wigan. Bateman was my man of the match. He soaked up a lot of punishment and was almost off his feet at the end. Also well done to the whole team for standing up to some real intimidation from Cronulla. Great weekend for RL in this country.

From a Hull fan with children in Australia, massive well done to Wigan for winning the World Club Challenge and Warrington on their victory the night previously. My son lives in Sydney and the Aussie fans constantly belittle the English game so this is one in the eye for them, even sweeter that it was at the hands of an English coach. Well done again, made us all proud last night lads.

Just wanted to say thanks to those opposition fans offering congratulations. Just shows when it comes to playing the aussies most people are mature enough to put club loyalties to one side.

From a Wakefield Trinity fan, just wanted to say congratulations.

Good to see in both games, British player's doing well.

Is now a good time to review the number of overseas player quota spots, and concentrate on nurturing and retaining our own stars

Congrats to Wigan from a Wire. Deserved victory. Ive been reading some of the Aussie comments on Social Media sites and they are embarrassing. One moaning that we have half a team full of Aussies. Actually no - We have Sims and Gidley. The rest English. Others moaning they had players missing, well so do both Wigan and Warrington, of which they are some of our best players.

I am not that naive that I will say SL is better than the NRL as it isnt. But to suggest our top teams couldnt compete regularly against the NRL teams is laughable. Dont forget they have the likes of the Knights who are dreadful.

Hopefully both Wigan and Warrington qualify for the WCS next year and it goes to Australia as both our clubs are advocates of this competition and have both expressed interest in going over to play them there this year and i suspect would do again next year.

Excuses about injuries will never wash when one team can spend more then double the other on it's players salaries. By definition they should have far more quality depth.

It also won't wash when Wigan are missing three of it's best players (Tomkins, Manfredi and McIlorum) and so were Wire (Hill, Currie and Ratchford).

Both our teams injuries were to more important players then theres were which just makes the victories all the sweeter.

Massive congratulations to Wigan, you were absolutely dominating them at points! Bateman was his usual outstanding self and you could do with resting him soon, the end of March seems like a good choice .

Couldn't agree more with you about that, all 6 of those players would have improved both teams, plus we were missing Crosby to. We basically played with 16 men as Livett was only given the last few minutes. It would have been great to have had us both go over there, play the games against the Aussies and then have our season opener against each other over there to promote SL.

Holmes, Feki and Barba are big misses for Cronulla as well, they start there sets of well. Plus Ennis is a big miss to however i think that was 13 out of the 17 that played in the GF?

For Brisbane im not too sure who was missing? The backline was basically full strength and they were missing Blair and i would say Sims to from the front row.

I also dont sign up to the fact they are under done either. They have played the Auckland 9's, and been in Pre-Season training for months.

congrats , but not to put a downer on it but do you think you could class Wigan as the best team in the world after that ? to me it seems the Aussies just didnt turn up and where rusty and out of season , the whole format needs changing because the way it is now its pretty worthless , they should play the WCC after the NRL GF at a nuetral venue and play 2-3 games on the same day like a magic weekend and give the teams some incentive to want to win the thing , it should be billed as the biggest game of the year but instead it feels like a freindly that the Aussies dont really take seriously , its just a holiday p1ss up for them , at least put some serious prize money up for the game and play it when the teams are firing on all cylinders!

But they did a cracking job of beating the team in front of them yesterday , I can only remeber a few WCC that was taken seriously Wigan beating Brisbane at Brisbane and the league format they did in the 90s but these days it seems a bit like the old war of the roses games or ngland v Scotland ( not much interest)

I would argue that given the amount of handbags in both games that the Aussies take it very seriously indeed. In both games they behaved with a lot of petulance, almost like spoiled brats. They don't like it up 'em!

yeah plenty of handbags , stick a boxer in a ring with no sparing and youll see the same but he will probably get ktfo, they might take it seriously but the timings just dont allow for both teams to be at there best , its all a bit watered down , I remember the old GBv Aussies test series's they where epic , now we have England v Oz hardly the same buzz or intensity , it needs to be worth winning , it should be like the state of origin but UKs best V oz best.

Imagine playing Real Madrid at home in the CL final 3 weeks before your season starts add in 21 hours extra travel and jet lag and you can kind of see why its not taken very seriously.

Last year they kicked us hard and it was expected , this year we won , but do you honestly think SL is a stronger league than the NRL now ? never in a million years , the game is a poor benchmark for where we actually stand.

read a quote from Andrew johns today which I'm guessing was largely the popular thinking in Australia:

"Whatever you’ve got in the bank, back the Broncos’
They’re going to smash Warrington. Warrington have got two or three out. They are going to give it to them. And then put all of that on the Sharks because they are going to annihilate Wigan."

I'm glad the sharks also tried the rough stuff, as it sums the Aussies up as real bad losers...and Coach Flanangans comments after the game were a disgrace... I'll be glad to get back to oz to two refs........

I watched nearly all the nrl games last season and your two refs and your bunker make bigger howlers than our one ref and james child infront of a flat screen tv...

suck it up Aussies....

Many congratulations on a deserved victory. Your pack laid the foundations well led by Bateman and Farrell.

I saw Paul Gallen in an interview and n the Cronulla site bemoaning the fact that this is their first game whereas we've had two friendlies and a league game together. We played with a quarter strength team at Leigh for 40 mins and then about a three quarter strength team at Catalans for 40/50 mins.

We clearly had a decent run out at Salford but that is the only game I'd class as giving us an advantage and when your playing teams from a comp that's lauded to be full of super humans, they should be able to overcome that.

so then you switch the champions league final to the last game of the season....I think that might work...

But guess what the Champions league wasn't the be all and end all of Soccer at one time. Winning the old first division was what mattered and the European competition wasn't taken that seriously at all for years.
And if I remember correctly English clubs were persuaded by the FA not to enter..... (sound familiar)

look at it now teams want to just compete in it and finishing in the top 4 in the league is almost as important as wining the league... do we want to get to that ... not really.

but surely we want the WCC challenge to be a big event.