It's a disgraceful attitude to have towards the tens of thousands of fans making the trip down to pay his salary and bonus. I can't believe it's coming out of one of our senior players mouths, and previously one of the head coaches.

Why is it disgraceful? He's being totally honest.

I'll take a 1- 0 or 2-0 win over a 30 - 28 defeat.

Of course we'd like a great open game, but a WIN is what will go down in the record books, and what matters most.

Spot on Rogues. Every fan of the game wants a fast, exciting spectacle that will live long in the memories. The players probably want the same but like Sam, I'd much prefer a dull game and bring the trophy back than be on the wrong end of an exhilarating defeat!
Sam is saying it how it is and all this talk of being disrespectful to those who pay his wages is pure cack!!

Disgraceful is a bit far, and I don't really buy into this "We pay their wages" stuff. It's not like we have all clubbed together to give IL the money to pay him. We are just paying money to watch rugby games, that's a fair exchange, not something they owe us for.

I just think it's unwise for him to say things which are likely to irk supporters and put off potential new fans ahead of our showpiece event, even if he is just being honest. I think "I hope the fans enjoy the game, but the most important thing to me is to win the cup." comes across a lot better than "I want to the cup, I don't care what the fans think.", do the club not give them any sort of guidance about interviews? I can't imagine IL or the marketing team really wanting that to be the message we send out.

Because it's selfish? Why should I waste my weekend spending a few hundred quid to be bored for 80 minutes just for 20 minutes of celebration at the end? A win will go down in the record books but no one cares about boring finals. Like Jonh, I'd completely forgotten we even won the 2013 final, it was such a non event that I'd subconsciously wiped it from my memory.

Like I said, you can play nice rugby and win. It's the defeatist attitude that we can't do both that annoys me when we have some of the best talent in the league.

I get WHAT he's saying. He's a professional sportsperson, and his job is to win at all costs - as long as it's within the laws of the game.

I'm surprised that he's actually saying it. I thought he'd had media training, so I'd have expected him to be able to avoid foot-in-mouth comments like "I don't care what the fans think".

People shouldn't get confused between a good game and a high scoring game. I've seen great games that are 8-6 and dire games which finish 48-38. Ultimately we would like a low error, tight contest which the ref lets flow and tries need to be earned through good play rather then being given via errors. Many people rave about State of Origin and they're exactly that!

People are going back to 2013 a lot yet not mentioning the weather that day (as pointerd out above) which was abysmal. In the main our final wins and defeats have been pretty good games and I think we all know a big game Wigan team is a different animal to the one we see in the weekly rounds.

If both teams play on saturday as they did in the semi I think we're in for a treat but if it's a borefest and we win 7-0 then so be it!!

I'm pretty sure Sam wants the game to be exciting, same as we all do... But if it isn't and Wigan win, so f'ing what.

This.

And me. To tell people giving up their hard earned money that their views and opinions mean nothing to him - especially given how little he has given back since his return - is pretty poor IMO. Plenty of fans have been extremely patient with his injury situation, particularly the last one where the cause of the injury has been the subject of much speculation. I would have expected something a bit more diplomatic from him, to say the least.

When Sam got sin binned in the semi final v Salford a Wigan "fan" sat just behind us and just in front of Ian Lenagan shouted out "tomkins you're f*****g s**t.
Sam just look up up at him, shook his head and politely asked "Are you a Wigan supporter"?

I'll stick to what I have said, I'll take an ugly win over a glorious defeat any day.

It would be interesting to look back at some of the posts from 2012 when we played some fantastic rugby, won the League Leaders Shield but nothing else.

That Wigan fan is an idiot and should be banned from games but again, apparently we can't play fantastic rugby and win trophies? Why can these 2 things not go together?

Who has said we can't apart from you?

Funniest part of that is that Sam shouldn't have even been penalised let alone binned!

Andy Farrell used to get the same years back. There's certain players that reach a level of class that then leaves them open to abuse when things drop below anything but perfect.

Sam was bang out of order with his comments to Bilko last year but he's done nothing wrong here other then possibly put his words over in slightly the wrong way.

John Winder?