I think playing against a pack which was more dominant made it harder for him to punch holes like he normally would.

I also thought Hughes and Lloyd's defence was poor tonight. They fell off an awful lot of tackles. Lloyd seemed to sidestep into Kearney for his try scoring opportunity too.

The likes of Crosby and Flower might run hard at the line but they don't seem to trouble the defenders like the bigger props do. They might make a yard more but rarely do they seem to dominate the collisions and that's the most important thing. I'd be surprised if either of those two or Lauaki matched the average metres made that Lima makes or even Prescott.

Farrell, as good as he is, doesn't offer that physical presence he offers something completely different while Lloyd is probably out of his depth at the moment.

I said to my friend that the forwards weren't on top like they usually are. That said, the young pack more than held their own and they're only going to get better. Really missed our senior forwards though - not that it'll be mentioned by anyone.

The problem was ball retention, the referee and the Tommy/O'Loughlin situation. The first two are pretty self explanatory, the third: O'Loughlin isn't a HB. Farrell isn't a LF. We lose ALL momentum when O'Loughlin isn't the pivot at 13. Should have brought back Mellor rather than shifting two guys out of position.

That semi-final against Leeds is going to be awfully tough now.

We we awful, the worst we have played all season. I think Sam having and knock then losing Goulding early on, on top of our current injuries, was just a couple too many. We lost any coherence in attack.

Disappointing tonight but nothing I'm too bothered about going forward.

It was nothing more than a blip tonight, an anomaly.

Poor ball control, spurned chance after spurned chance, a sending off, uncharacteristic defense. Those aren't the qualities we've come to expect from this Wigan side. Unfortunately what could go wrong tonight did and we paid the price against a spirited Bradford side. It tuck all those things to happen for us to lose narrowly with a weakened side. It just wasn't meant to be. Written in the stars if you will.

I'm most disappointed as someone else points out, that everytime we get a bumper crowd at the DW we lose.

Any news on fuzzy?

Would be a big miss. Looked ankle?

Thing was, we had chances enough - Farrell's first break where he passed when he could probably have scored, his second where he sent a perfect pass to Gelling, even Rhodri Lloyd had a decent chance in the second where he decided to try & cut inside to beat the last man rather than running into the enormous gap on the outside. We just kept letting them off the hook.

Add to that Hock being a liability all the way through, playing Lockers as a half when he just isn't, giving Charnley nothing all game & no Sam... And I know Gelling shows potential at times, but to me he's looking like an athlete not a rugby player.

Can only assume Sam was injured - surely if you were going to rest him you'd have done it against Widnes?

This loss doesn't bother me one bit. I can't work out whether it's because the final standings mean nothing or because it changed nothing in the league anyway?

I think losses in a strange way are what high teams need. We were never going to go out for the rest of the season and win every single remaining game, better losing in a nothing game to Bradford than a big match vs saints.

It was, we were poor all round tonight.....agree Gareth Hock had a shocker, and, for me, one of the turning points in the game was Rhodri Lloyd's missed chance...looking to go under the posts for a six-pointer instead of making sure of the four?

Thought Jack Murphy stood up quite well considering it was his first team debut. Prehaps it was the kick up the backside we needed to iron out any complacency, we'll dust ourselves down, see what happens with injuries and the disciplinary, and prepare for Wakefield.

Good point, especially with Wire losing as well. The CC semi is the big one coming up, and tonight will have shown Waney that some of his plans need changing a bit. I hope.

Maybe it's just my age, but I still care about coming top of the league & was brassed off that we could have gone 5 points clear & probably tied that up.

Add to that I've developed a terrible record of only getting to go to CC semi's/GF Eliminators which we end up losing - no sooner do I buy tickets than our form starts to take a downwards turn again....

Never been superstitious, but I'm beginning to wonder if I should get some lucky heather.

Yayy! A music thread!