Take Lomax and Welsby out and neither would you! Simple fact is, those players are in our squad (although French missed the 1st 7 games of the season and has still scored most tries by a distance). Show me a side that doesn’t play to their strengths and I’ll show my hoop at the town hall. Your side simply lacks the depth that we have. You lost Dodd and struggled to replace him. We lost Leuluai and up steps Harry Smith. There’s your difference.

Stu it seems like you are a bit bitter about Friday, it is only a game mate.

Dodds a top prospect but before his injury, he had zero assists, playing behind that pack.

Take the 20 Challenge Cup wins from our record and we would not be the Cup Kings! It’s a pointless argument.

But would still have won more trophies than every other club

We were without French for the first quarter of the season and seemed to be doing alright.

Best scrum half didnt realise Harry had signed for you,Dodds maybe good but he aint Harry thats for sure.

Just catching up on this thread and I don't think either Dodd or Smith would have made the final squad, I think the fact hed spoken to Jackson Hastings tells you that

Yes but then we was just a one man team!

Honestly, i hate when this argument comes up against Wigan, we have speed in our backs so we play a style of rugby that compliments that and gets them players into try scoring positions. If we was just passing the ball to Field and French every play then the rest of the team stops running and scratches their 's like an u7's match i would have to agree with Stu.

There is so much more to our team than that though, we won the game friday on merit of our goal line defence and the effort our lads put in for eachother, that was far from all Field and French! Not to mention some great attacking play from many other members of our squad. Field and French are intergrated into our game structure, not the beginning and end of it.

You can't go saying things like that!

Repeat after me:

Wigan have pace and nothing else

Wigan are a two man team.

The rest of the squad are "bang average".

Wigan only beat Saints because of injuries.

Even then they only beat them if they play at their best and Saints couldn't have played any worse.

There are no other ways to win a game of rugby other than territory. Saints are the best at gaining territory ergo they are always the best team on the field regardless of scoreline or any other factors.


Repeat 10 times morning and night and we'll soon have these silly ideas out of your head.

Well anyway if rumours are to be believed we'll have Hopoate, Makinson, Percival and Sione all back for the play-offs so there will be no excuses.

Hopoate, Makinson, Hurrell, Sione, Percival, Welsby, Lomax would be a dream to be able to put out in the semi - here's hoping . . . .

Will be very interesting indeed to see how we line up vs Toulouse at the weekend.

No excuses, pah !!! We'll never hear the end of it when they've all hobbled off after 5 mins

I hope you do have a full as much as poss squad.

Didnt Makinson,Percival,Welsby,Lomax,Hurrell play in the last semi you lost,Will Sione and Hopoate make that much difference ?

Hopoate is the biggest potential returnee to be honest - he’s the one that means we have three ball players at 1/6/7 - Ben Davies there has been pretty hopeless (no offence to the lad, he’s not a 6).

Compare Hopoate’s classy contributions at Magic to Ben Davies in the semi and you probably have your answer.

You’re right though - that semi final team looks veritably packed compared to recent weeks! The halves killed us that day - Lomax was struggling to pass and Davies was really poor plus Josh Simm served up a bit of a disaster.

All of which could of course happen again - Simm is an experienced back up player now who we are entitled to have to rely on, he just had a mare. You can’t complain about first reserves having a mare - I think our biggest issue that day was Woolf picked the wrong team and Wigan were their usual lethal selves when the opportunities were there.