NO, as said above Hanky was gettting treatment at the time of said kick, He still kicked 4 from 5 iirc

That was never Inu. Someone must have sneaked a cardboard cut out of him onto the pitch instead

.

Sadly I completely agree with that. With the exception of Saints the general quality is poor. Even some of London’s high scoring but high conceding wins are generally poor.

That's super duper league for you, but then you will get the salary as levelled the playing field brigrade

Don't think it's negative Azza just an opinion as I see it.
I'm not really a stats type but the completion rate for Salford must be embarrassing for a full time professional outfit.

The number of unforced errors by most teams is almost comical. A good team would have whipped that Salford performance with a score considerably higher than 28.

Happy with the win but seriously if that was a performance to start people thinking of of GF aspirations that I need to start smoking something a bit strong

I agree that on a warm, dry evening - in perfect conditions in fact - the lack of core skills on show from both Wigan and Salford was dire.

This is very much the story across SL, with the exception of Saints. Every fixture is littered with basic errors from start to finish. Professional wages are being paid for semi-amateur standards.

To me, the blame goes three ways:

1) The players either aren't good enough or aren't professional enough to focus on their job. Ryan Sutton is a classic example, the guy showing bags more quality when faced with a situation of 'get fitter and perform better or face deselection'.

2) The coaches are mostly lacking. Shaun Wane was by far the best coach in the UK to get what he did out of that Wigan team. But there were areas where he too was weak, e.g in terms of playing exciting rugby, crowds dwindling as a result. That said, there wasn't another coach in SL I'd have happily traded for Wane.

3) The RFL's all-round incompetence has been documented many times, but their biggest crime was allowing British RL to become a poor man's game, failing to fund it adequately, thus ensuring that we get third pick of all involved, players, coaches etc ... after the NRL and more embarrassing still, after RU.

The scary thing is, people are saying (rightly) that this is an improvement on our early-season displays. This! I remember thinking during the game, I don't know how we are winning this so comfortably, there's not much between the teams. And there wasn't. But a couple of tidy finishes from Marshy, and a kick from GW that looked too big for all money in real time, but nevertheless held up just in time, and suddenly the points start to rack up. Especially if you turn 4 into 6, as we usually doo these days.

And I would argue that our defence is still not that good. Regardless of what stats say, there are big holes appearing at times, which a better side than Salford would exploit. I would argue that our defence is not *back* to Wane standard, by some distance.

I haven’t seen anybody say anything like we’re bang on form in either in attack or defence. The fact is we’ve won 4 out of 4 and bigger picture we’ve won 7 out of 9. Our form has significantly turned and i’d argue we’re getting better week after week. We’re playing without 3 of what would have been our top 4 props at the start of the season in Flower, Hamlin and Tautai and I think it’s time we have them a bit of credit.
We’re up to 4th and people on here are acting like we’re in the same boat as Leeds! Just accept it for what it is. It’s a transitional season that started horrendously. We’ve had more off field issues and disruption than we could ever have imagined but the club has turned it around. We know Saints are the benchmark but they were in the same boat last year and look what happened. We’re in the top 4 and we’ve not hit top form yet. If we do, somebody is in for a real thumping.

I didn't say anyone had said we were "bang on form". We've won 6 of the last nine actually (lost twice to Wire and to Cats at the Nou Camp). We have won our last four against some of the poorer sides in the comp, and we are slowly showing signs of improvement. But let's not not over-egg the pudding.

If we can get through the HKR game, which won’t be easy, then we’ll get a real test of where we’re at the following week away at Saints. They’re clearly the benchmark and you suspect even at our best we’ll still be a bit short but it will be interesting to see how close we are to the standards of our fine form during the run in last season.

Some of the poorer sides? Salford are far from one of the poorest teams in the league but then again you're a Wigan fan so it's fairly standard to look down on anyone that isn't one of the supposed bigger clubs.

Shows what an arrogant bunch most of your fans are. You beat a massively understrength (and underperforming) Salford team at home by 16 points with a late 12 point swing (disallowed Salford try followed by a Wigan try in what appeared to be added time). Add in some blatant "homer" decisions by Kendal and I wouldn't start planning trips to OT just yet.



Btw, that "atmosphere" is an absolute embarassment for a supposed big club.

Barely a murmer from 12,000 home fans apart from the small group of chavs with the drums stood behind the goal who look barely old enough to be attending RL games on their own.



PS. Sam Powell's a right gobby little sh*te isn't he? Horrible little t*rd of a player.

Cometh the hour, cometh the village idiot