Im not blaming Murphy individually but he was the main reason we lost tonight. I wont congratulate and cover him in cotton wool for not being able to catch numerous balls. You learn to catch at an early age and dropping balls should be a minimum regardless of age. He has played in front of good crowds for the under 20's so the occasion is no excuse.

The way he approached his catches was quite shocking. Leaning back and holding his arms outstretched. That is not how to catch a ball im afraid.

Finch cost us the game with dumb play when we were ahead.

Anyone blaming Murphy is deluded. The lad did fine in such an intense game. Yes he dropped a couple, so has Tomkins, so did Radlinski, even the superb Wellens drops some. In that intense a game, in a team often on the back foot, in slippery/rainy conditions, with a ball spiralling and swirling in the air, he did fine.
Wigan lost it in the forwards and around the ruck, not because of the fullback

He's playing with the big boys now so giving him false praise is no good either. Showed a few glimpses he might be a squad player at best but the way he approached the ball when catching was horrendous! Some fault should lie with the coaching staff if you're putting someone in the firing line like that.

Spot on for me.

he was solid up untill the last few catches. have we all forgotten that catch and run he did in the opening 10.
don't try to blame the result on anything. the game could have gone either way and what a great game of rl
it was. wire had that last minute sinfield conversion to put us out last year. fair play to leeds tonight. if it was the
wigan of 2 or 3 months back then i would say that you were the best performing side all year by a mile,
like wire were last season. the way you played rl in those few months was frightening to see as a wire fan
and im sure for all the other fans.

hold your heads high after this season. with mguire going to the nrl and other factors, i think you've been
outstanding this year and i personally think that wayne has brought an extra attacking element above the
rl attacking moves that mguire brought,as great as a coach as mguire is.

onwards and upwards.

I hope not, but i'll probably be saying the same thing tomorrow night v saints but i really
hope not. should be a cracker.

the best sport in the world

and me, forwards only turned up in the 2nd half. lockers at 9...again....Wane wake up! our kicking games was awful, ever when in a good position, how many repeat sets, how many kicks on 5th where we actually created pressure!

god help us next year.........

The 'fault' doesnt lay with Jack Murphy for the mistakes he made tonight.
For me, it was just unbelievable that Waney would drop an inexperienced kid into such a pivotal position in such a crucial game!
Utterly baffling, CRAZY decision.
Murphy looks to have real potential, and i just worry that his confidence will be absolutely shattered by what happened tonight.
For mine, Pat should have been slotted into FB with Sam out. Not even a decision to be made really.

Wasnt Murphy's inexperience that cost us our GF place...........In reality it was Shaun Wanes.

The only thing the poster missed out was Sinfield. That was probably one of the best tacitcal kicking displays I have ever seen. It was utterly sublime. I was baffled by his ability to place the ball anywhere he wanted at points tonight.

To blame Murphy would just be ridiculous. He did remarkably well considering he got injured about 5 minutes in and was struggling throughout most of the game.

Those kicks from Sinfield were excellent and every single fullback in the league would have found them difficult to deal with. It's alright saying Richards could have played fullback but he would have struggled with those kicks too. It's great being tall and being able to catch when challenged but when the ball is moving all over the place when kicked there's not much you can do but hope you get in the right place.

The biggest mistake was not closing Sinfield down and allowing him to put kicks like that up with ease. Wire showed how important it is to close him down but the defence didn't have the intensity and failed to put him under pressure.

Murphy was probably the safest pair of hands we could have had at fullback tonight, sometimes you've just go to credit excellent kicking and bemoan poor pressuring.

You are right and he can bounce back, Darren Lockyer in his first game for Australia at fullback was far worse than Murphy was v Leeds.

well that rules tomkins out then

I am disgusted that some Wigan fans are making Murphy the scapegoat on only his 2nd appearance. We have some great fans but I really do think we have some of the worst as well. Once again we lost it in the forwards, had an awful kicking game and had little/no direction from half back. For some reason we also played a different style than what we played all year and our centres barely touched the ball. Its much easier to blame a young inexperienced kid though I suppose.

Murphy's couple of dropped catches weren't good and really should have been collected. Having said that, they didn't cost Wigan the game. They may have given a breather to Leeds and taken momentum from the home team but what cost the league leaders the game was some good tactics (and execution) by Leeds and Wigan's inability to burst through a paper bag.

Thought the forwards were poor (where were O'Loughlin and Hock?) and when there was a bit of speed and potential to take control in the second half, sometimes the wrong option was chosen. Just one of those nights.

I'd blame the coach for selecting him, he may well be a future star but this wasn't a game for throwing in a young inexperienced player and certainly not at full back.

Pat Richards could have gone to No1 with Thornley or Gelling coming onto the wing, you could even have put Charnley at the back.

Young Murphy was solid for the most part and looked likely to break the line on a few occasions, he wasn't anywhere near to blame for spilling a bomb, that's happened to the best of them.