Spot on. This is nothing against Sam Powell who has been superb all season long, but we are lacking a spark and drive during the latter stages of halves usually. An example of this would be Wire, who have Brad Dwyer to come on to replace Daryl Clark and he gives them an added edge IMO. Tommy coming in probably gives us that option for next year but whether he has the legs anymore is another question.

What's missing are dummy runners, more offloads, off the cuff attacking, scoots from Powell in the Higham style to pinch a few yards from lazy markers, an ineffective fullback (IMO Tomkins needs to go into the halves as he is a passenger at 1)

The display at Hull illustrated Wigan's will to win under Wane. I doubt that any coach in the league would have got a team in the top 4 after losing their hooker for the whole season. Lockers is still missing too. Replacing him takes two players really.

If we add to that Sam Tomkins is not the player he was then Wigan have had to overcome several major setbacks this season.

Sam is clearly struggling. I wouldn't be at all surprised top see him retire from the game altogether. It is clear that he does offer us improved defence, leadership quality and a still decent passing game. However his return has not been the success that I'd hoped to see. I think it is really quite sad to watch him at the moment.

We have missed McIlorum hugely. Imagine Hull without Houghton or Wire without Clark for the season, would they have made top 4 as easily?

For large parts of the season we have had no first choice 1, 6, 9 or 13 in the team. We have hardly seen Joel Tomkins or Faz for that matter. No wonder they have struggled in attack. Credit the coach for the defensive effort.

I have always supported SW and have no doubt that he deserves another season in the role. I do agree that he may need an assistant. I also would criticise him for over doing the aggressive stuff in big games. An example was the Saints derby in July. Saints were average but won in the end because Wigan couldn't even master the basics, and were far too intent on hurting people.

If Waney is to be replaced the new coach would come from one of three possible sources. (1) Super League (2) Union (3) NRL. There is no Super League coach who is superior, Powell is okay at 'small town' Cas, but he hasn't done much there. They bottled it in the only big games they have played (CC Final and LLS decider at Catalans in 2014). Edwards and Farrell have been away for too long really, though I would prefer them to Powell. A big name like Bellamy isn't going to come over from the NRL, we can only attract an assistant. We struck gold with Madge, but I worry that we are more likely to get Peter Gentle/Royce Symmonds mark II than Madge mark II. We need to be careful not to lose the good things that Wane has brought to the club.

As for next season. Matty Smith will be missed. Tommy is not a good enough kicker to play scrum half. He needs a kicking Stand Off like Trent Barrett to allow him to function. I wonder what role Powell will play. Not that I necessarily want it but I think Waney will start Powell at 7 with Tommy on the bench, assuming MMc starts. We will miss Josh too. Great to have Joe back but I think we are light in the centres. We need another utility back. Depending on who goes out of Super League, I'd be sniffing around Cudjoe, who was excellent against us twice this season, McGilvary, Murphy and Wardle from the Giants and Jones, Sa'u and Evalds from Salford.

I don't think that is true. When he played on the wing for the latter half of the season he was fine. It was playing him at centre that didn't work early on.

Playing players out of position has ruined a few Wigan careers or never got them started. We signed Lauaki after he played well in the 2nd row against us and then stuck him at prop for example.

Can't argue with much of that, but,




I'd argue Tommy is at least as good an out-of-hand kicker as Smith, probably better. I accept that still doesn't put him in the first rank, though.

I'm more than happy to believe that you are right about Tommy. But we don't have a particularly good recent record of 'old boys' returning.

The Widnes game surely proved to everyone that Matty was badly missed and that Shorrocks is nowhere near ready.

Bowen?

I’d agree if we had generally been good in attack, and the Widnes game was a one off with Smith missing, but that isn’t the case. The Widnes game showed we are very poor in attack, and that Shorrocks isn’t able to step in and fix it (not that it should be expected!).

IMO our issues lie primarily with coaching, as the players at our disposal are good enough to score more than they have. We get the field position, yet they don’t seem to have a clue what to do in the opposition 20m. Whether the answer is to bring in an attacking coach or just replace Wane I don’t know. It would be ideal for Wane to stay as defensive coach to learn from someone more experienced but I’m sure he would rather leave to be head coach somewhere else.

Having said all that, I did say before the season kicked off that we lack spark at 7 and 9 compared with our biggest competitors, Tommy should prove a shrewd signing in that regard. Is Smith definitely on his way? It baffles me that Saints would consider him.

How much coaching is necessary? The players knew what to do in attack before this season (I know we weren't amazing in 2015 either but it was much better than this season) so I find it hard to believe that Wane's coaching has declined so much and that the players need constant reminding of what to do; perhaps you're overrating the quality of our players and they in fact are not as good as they once were?

It's a completely valid excuse. Cas are doing so well in the league as well aren't th- oh wait! They're currently 9 points off the top 4 and 11 behind us.

They are excellent to watch but I'd much rather be in our position than theirs.

Although we have been poor in many areas I believe our biggest problem to be last tackle kicking options, especially near the opponent line. We seem to love the old grubber into the corner. But look at Hull, in recent weeks I've seen them score quite a lot of tries from Sneyd simply kicking a high one to the corner and Fonua competing well in the air. We never seem to test the opponent wingers with high kicks to the corner, I can't remember the last time Charnley scored a try like this.

I'm convinced we haven't put a bomb into the corner all season. Manfredi's arguably the best under the high ball too and Charnley's not bad either.

But, we still see the tired, forced grubber to the corner. Every time (unless Bateman conjurs something out of nothing).

Positionally maybe - but if Wigan have become nothing more than a team that just grinds out wins playing awful rugby then it is a very sad state of affairs and getting to the positon we have says a lot about the state of the game as a whole.

In reality my point was that even with a lot of injuries some teams still maintain an attractive playing style - I would expect that a club like Wigan should be capable of doing that (more so that a club like Cas as we have greater resources on and off the pitch to call on - at the risk of upsetting Cas fans). With the exception of one or two games this season Wigan have not really shown any great flair or attacking skill even when most of the players have been fit early season.

Basic attacking skill should be something that players are capable of despite the team having players out (and yes I get that some of the players missing have been our main pivots) but the vast majority of the paltry number of tries scored this season have in the main been individual players creating something - not great team play.

Even against Hull - great defense but the scores were individual efforts - again not the result of good attacking team play.

Rugby like any sport is supposedly entertainment - something Wigan have been missing.

I'll wager most Cas fans are happier about their season than most Wigan fans, despite finishing well below us.

The rugby we played last season wasn't great, but it's a damn sight worse this year.

Can't agree with that. Yes we've been dire to watch but at least we've been able to grind out a lot of wins meaning we're still in the running at the business end of the season. Playing flashy attacking rugby but being inconsistent results wise meaning you've nothing to play for by the time the Super 8's comes round can hardly be called a successful season IMO.