Being in the army I believe that the lads will thrive of the tough training and although they probably hate it at the time after it's over its more beneficial than an easy session,if players leave wigan for an easier ride than there not the players we want out on the pitch for us.People may call us thugs but I think the lads will run through walls for each other and a team that's not necessarily big or fearsome punches well above its weight.We are just missing that little spark of magic(green,Tomkins)

The brutal training regime was reintroduced by Michael Maguire (I say reintroduced because it was commonplace under the likes of Lowe and Monie). So are we saying that Madge, who guided us to our first silverware in years, is the one at fault here? Or is the brutal regime only wrong when Shaun Wane employs it?

See points 1 and 2.

Wasn't always great either.

And is that a proven fact ... that training is much harder under Wane than it was under Maguire? For one thing Wane reintroduced warm weather training in Florida. Didn't Madge have them up in North Yorkshire, camping in snow?

There seems to be a lot of opinion masquerading as fact here... With all the medical aids at their disposal, i very much doubt that players are leaving all on the training pitch... Whether rugby League is better for the training regimes that ALL clubs will now have, is another topic, and a very interesting one.

Well it comes from a player who has experienced both so I'd believe him over someone speculating on a forum.

But that statement you're treating as evidence is misleading because the OP was apparently selective in the parts of it he presented.

Disregarding whether training was harder under Maguire or Wane, if the quoted piece had also mentioned that Charnley went on to say that he liked the regime as this would help keep Wigan among the best, it would have had a much less negative vibe.

I'm not going to keep going on about this, because it's a pointless argument - but I for one will never be unhappy to hear that Wigan are training very, very hard.

They did. Training ground injuries were pretty regular occurrences last season. There was a debate about it on Mike's board last season and there was a list all taken from official reports off the club web site.

And this week "Dan Sarginson suffered a dead leg during the Captain's Run the day before the game". From the match report on the official site.

Nothing wrong with the physical fitness, IMO, but the mental aspect is sadly below par, both in terms of discipline and on-field decision making.

No arguments there. We are very short of a cool-headed leader on the field. With the exception of Lockers, all our senior men - Tomkins, McIlorum and Farrell - are prone to losing it.

I agree but I think there is a difference between training to be physically fit and knocking seven bells out of each other in full contact training week in and week out during the season. I can recall last season Wane saying he was going to flog the players during training after a bad result.

If all this is true I don't think it is very smart coaching.

No imo. It is frustrating when you hear a player has picked up an injury in training but surely you have to trust our coaches and backroom staff (I believe we spend more on our backroom staff than any other club).

Wane, Deacon, Bitcon, the physios, sports scientists etc will study our training non-stop and in particular the effect it has on game day. Ultimately you've got to trust them, why would they do anything in training which negatively effects the team on game day? I remember last season when we had an injury crisis and Wane said how they'd looked into the training in detail and could see no correlation between training and the injuries the players had picked up.

I keep wondering if we're making the best use out of preseason, and if it needs mixing up a bit. I know Bitcon and his team plan the training meticulously but the team have been over to Florida for the past 3 seasons now and each of those three seasons have started a bit on the sluggish side. The attack seems a lot less "well oiled" than in previous seasons and the players don't appear as fit as in the Maguire days. Like I say, it is well planned and people with a lot more knowledge in sports science are in charge, but I wonder if the 10 days or so over in Florida every season is the best preparation.

was it not Nobby who took them up to Scotland (?) for a bit of shock & awe, that didn't work either. I can only think it's more of a systemic problem than anything geographical. Let's see if things improve tonight, then we can leave worrying about it for another year.