Not bad for a team with one move a 400+ points difference is it.

I hate some of our fans

having watched the match back, i dont think our attacking options were limited to the point where we need to worry. leeds did pile the pressure on with their defence but we still had plenty of opportunities, like gouldings ball to charnely going to ground when charnley was in the clear, oloughlins offload straight to moon on the try line, sam powells disallowed try and mcilorum losing it (i thought hardaker reefed it out, but then mcilorum was charging in ball first so can understand the decision) over the line. a couple of times we missed opportunities that, were blake green on the field instead of sam powell, we would not have missed. but as others have said, powell was probably the best half on the pitch for the majority of the game. but if that still doesnt work, it seems that spreading the ball earlier and with a deeper line of attack should still work as leeds can only rush so fast as long as we ship the ball nice and quickly. barring that, we need the forwards to ship the ball on from first receiver a la farrell for tomkins' try on sunday. plenty of options, just hope wane has the same idea.

People will always have different opinions. It's to be expected on a forum such as this so you need to get used to it. How can you hate someone you've never met?

Oh get a grip its a figure of speech.

We are top of the league with a points difference that is 300 points better than anyone else and some of our doom mongers are debating our attack! Leeds defended well, its as simple as that. Everyone has played everyone at least once, we are 300+ points better than anyone else, to me, that tells me we are the best attacking team in the league.

We've also conceded the fewest points.

Good post, thank you for posting this as after recent abuse I was unwilling to post the same thing.

Leeds completely shut off our '1 move', rushed on the flanks and that was it, we were forced to play down the middle. I totally agree, there didn't seemed to be anything else going on in attack.

Leeds forced this, made it into an arm wrestle, and before a pen was awarding giving us field possession and positioning we were losing the battle (this can be seen from where we were kicking from on the last tackle compared to Leeds.

Also it had to be noted how we scored our points, often (not always but often) on the back of a Leeds mistake, not even a forced errors (Bailey's push on Logan, Sinfield's silly kick attempt).

I've said it many times before, our structured attack when executed with speed will kill 95% of teams in the SL, BUT when tried against a top team it will become predictable as it did on Sunday.

With a returning Peacock and Abblet, I don't see us beating Leeds when it matters.

We put 50 points on pretty much the same team using a structured attack last season.

And Sam didnt feature in the (GF) play off semi final, Matty Smith was strugglin for fitness on Sunday, the trouble is our forwards were expected to dominate on Sunday and they didn't- thats full credit to Leeds. A bit of fine tuning and Wigan will have a better chance of making both finals. The loss of the half backs earlier on in the season has had less impact than last season, it has also let us blood out the younger guns. I feel a lot more optimistic with this squad compared to last years, and possibly a weakening of the teams this year is clouding my opinion.

I feel that Leeds should be worried, they struggled in attack and failed to score more than Wigan. In defence the leaked more points than the Wigan team.

The end result, Wigan win and our fans whinge about having a close game against one of the closest teams in the league and the team that have had the most success in recent years.

IMO that was much more than a 2 point win. We took on a good team who can turn it on on the big stage and got a result. Leeds looked rattled, giving away silly penaltys while under pressure.
Leeds did manage to limit us on the outside, but we could have been more streetwise in dealing with it.
Mybee someone more clued up on tactics can enlighten me as to why we didn't try and pin their rush defense back with the boot or set plays to make more time for our outside plays.
I haven't read the stats but we seemed to make a few breaks down the middle that required Leeds tackles to stick, Luky for them they did.
I would have been happy with the result before the game and even more afterwards.

"Debating the attack" doesn't qualify you as a doom monger. I didn't comment personally but was interested to read about that point of view. You would no doubt be in heaven if like you everyone just posted how brilliant we are, even when presented with clear evidence that our league position is no indicator of who will prevail this season. Some would say that makes you a happy clapper but that's just another figure of speech I suppose.

I think people not being satisfied with that win on Sunday is a sign of the massively high standards we've now got and that is a real positive IMO. I'm somebody who wasn't overly impressed with Sunday, I thought we were left with a few more questions of our credentials then answers, but I know we can and will play better.

I really don't get why anybody shouldn't be able to give constructive criticism. If somebody posts utter drivel about things that simply weren't there, like a lack of effort or application then fair enough bag them but when it's constructive things about tactical issues and the like then that is surely what this forum is for, to debate area's we need to improve.

I was sat on the second tier behind the posts Sam was kicking towards and I am pretty sure it drifted wide.

It has been interesting watching this article develop, it started out with the first poster just saying that we seemed to struggle when Leeds played with a rush defence. HE WAS SHOT DOWN IN FLAMES WITH THE FOLLOWING COMMENTS.

Most Points scored.
Least Points conceded.
Massive points difference compared to the opposition.

Those statistics do not mean a thing when it comes to a very close match, against Wire, Leeds and Hudds (to a lesser extent)we have been found out a few times in the last couple of years.

It is just common sense when things are not going well to have options, I was the first to post on this article and I mentioned having Sam at halfback on the odd times. Give your opponents who think they have your number something to think about.

One prime example comes to mind and I admit play 30 plus years ago was not as structured as it is today.

It was watching the great Bill Ashurst in the second row, Bill was one of the cleverest Forwards I ever saw play and without doubt the hardest .
Bill had a trick of receiving the ball even when in his own half, dropping it at his feet giving it a short punt then charging after it. All this was under the old 5 yard rule and defenders did not have much time to obstruct, if they did it was either a blatant obstruction or Bill used to take retribution.

What was brilliant about this was if Bill got through, the fullback or covering halfbacks had the choice of rushing forward to dive at Bills feet, or hang back, which was often to Wigan's advantage. Nobody dived at Bills feet if he was going for the ball.

I may have been a bit melodramatic with this post, but what I am trying to get across is always have options when thing are not going to plan.

Fair point.



Which is in a nutshell what this thread is about. My point is all the better sides have done this and we have not dealt with it very well.



That follows from what you said above. We didn't deal with it very well so when it wasn't working where was the variation?



They did need to stick but as someone else mentioned another way to deal with it was do as we did the other week and switch Sam to 6. Not all the time but that would have caused pause for thought IMO. We just don't seem to have a plan B.

It's a no-brainer to say we will be in the mix for the trophies. Unless there is an upset we will be in a semi-final for the CC. It's the semi's and finals where we will need a plan B if plan A isn't working IMO. That is when we will have to beat one of the better teams when it matters.