People are not sticking the knife in, just being realistic. Given next years squad looks poorer on paper than this years why would you be expecting improvement or even the team doing as well as it did in 2012? And that is regardless of whether Wane has learnt any lessons from his mistakes this year and does actually improve the way he coaches and trains the side.

Agree with that asessment. I feel wane is a victim of his own high standards. The expectations he has set for himself to me seem unrealistic in the current climate.

He wanted to cut out the close defeats and defeats in winnable games and make all the finals (and win them all?), I mean what the hell...... was he expecting wigan to only lose 1 or 2 games all season? Come on. Theres a saying that if you aim for the roof you fall on the floor, if you aim for the sky you fall on the roof. The problem for wane is that he aimed high, but he didn't aim smart. Instead of trying to increase the quality of performance across the season, aim for even higher quality of performance...but in a select period of the season. Win the war, not the battle. Had wane had that mentallity from start to finish I'm sure wigan would have been contesting that grand final last week, and quite possibly the CC final as well.

Maybe Wane was also victim of his need to impress, a new coach in his first full time role at a club he loves wants to go out and win lot's of games, playing sparkling rugby.

Wanes card is marked now. Hull are coming, warrington will be no weaker next season, leeds will still be sniffing around and saints are a wild card with the new coach, but wigan, as recruitment stands, look weaker. If wane doesn't adopt the right approach next season he is gone.

''He will be dealt with appropriatley, he will be taken care of'' *he says while stroking an extremley furry, smug looking cat*

The thing is, wigan play a very structured, systematic type of game. This is a legacy of Maguire and also in part noble.

It's not inconceivable that the new halfbacks can fit into that structure, and the machine can continue to operate effectively.

Poorer on paper agreed, but lets be honest, not many people were skipping with joy when we signed Leuluai and only the most diehard NRL fans would have heard of Carmont. Add to that the anonymity of Finch and Lima for the last third of the season will those two be missed ?
The backline for next season IMO, looks considerably quicker than this years, add another prop and make sure we have back up at hooker and I don't think we'll be far off.
Regards Wane it would help if he stopped motivating the opposition but it was his first year fronting press conferences so hopefully he'll pause and think a little before answering questions.

Where has this come from that we were playing worse under Wane than we were Madge? We played some stinkers in Madge's time here and I adored the guy.

The RL we played in May and June was some of the best we've played in a long long long long time. Injuries caught up with us and we dipped but still managed to put 40 and 50 points on teams.

This season has been nowhere near as bad as some on here are making out.

Agreed!

Weren't you one of the people saying we were losing too much quality at the end of last season and would finish about 4th this season? Surely then Wane has overacheived contrary to your original predicitions? We didn't make both finals in either season under Madge's approach so I really don't see how Wane keeping that approach would have got us to them!? Wane made mistakes this season don't get me wrong but I think you are being massively over critical without any real back up to your arguments.

Not to my knowledge - no.

The team has not played consistently well since the exiles game and lost two semi finals to boot. I think the only team in the top 5 we beat since the end of June was Les Cats. The team looked knackered despite not having got to the CC final.

All this was being said on this board at the time with plenty of comments from various posters about it. The second half of this season was the worst I have seen Wigan play since Noble left.

We'd just lost our first choice number 7 FFS and had to move a 13 to 6 before introducing a new player into arguably one of the most important positions on the field where he had to not only learn how to work our moves but how to work with the players around him. It took Brett Finch a year to do that but he was lucky to have Ryan Hoffman and Jeff Lima alongside him who knew his game and he knew theirs. Smith had nobody.

We'd also lost yet another prop forward, were missing our first choice winger, had swapped our back row around to accommodate Lockers moving to 6 and had several other players playing injured as we had no numbers left.

We pasted Catalans in the playoffs and were a point away from making the GF but lost to the eventual Champions who were also defending their crown.

Rubbish season Wigan. Wane out. IFL out. I'm not going again.

That for me was where the season really started to go downhill - it changed the entire dynamic of the team and we never really found a workable solution, at least not consistently. Even when Tommy came back was obvious that he was far from fully fit and could only make a little difference.

We will never know how things would have panned out if Tommy hadn't been injured but it was clear as day that the team played much better before he got injured.

Im sure it had an impact on our departing players as well, bacause Finch's and Lima's performances definitely dipped as well.

O yeah I totally agree - thing is, matty smith didnt fit in as nicely as tommy and we noticed a difference. I'm not having a go at Smith as I think he will prove an astute signing. I just think two new halfbacks is always a very tough situation - especially when they're replacing possibly the best/most effective halfback combination we've had for near 20 years?

be interesting to see what people thibnk our best halves have been since the glory days?

We did NOT have to move 13 to 6. There were other and better options. We lost one player and made matters worse by moving the leagues best 13 to a position he does not play well in against decent sides and had to play someone else at 13. So not only did we lose Tommy we lost our 13 who was also key to the way the team played.

We then moved the leagues best 13 to 9 when in the playoffs.



Smith wasn't played in the half backs in league games in the run up to the CC despite the fact we bought him off Salford because Wane wanted to stick with Lockers at 6 and Finch at 7 due to Smith being cup-tied. After Tommy came back for the play offs Smith didn't play half back again. Why on earth did we bring him in, in 2012? He didn't figure at 7 in either major competition. It's not Smith's fault and its not an issue with Smith that our post-exiles form was rubbish. Far more to do with Wane.



Yes we did swap the back row about! We even played Lockers at 9! That is part of the problem and partly why we didn't do better.



Battering the 4th placed side and being a point away from a GF next season won't keep Wane in a job whether he wins the league or not.

We played ONE league game in the lead up to the CC after signing Smith and he RIGHTLY played at 9 so that Lockers could play another game at 6. What were these better options? (we scored 50 points in that game and won easily btw)

He then played 6 of the next 8 in the halves.

When our best 7 returned for the start of the playoffs we moved him to 9. What a huge error. Fancy playing your best 7 at 7 for the biggest games of the season. Had we played Smith at 7 and Tommy at 9 then I guarantee you'd have asked why and moaned about it.

Lockers was played at 9 for 20 minutes in 2 games because we had no other options due to tje banning of MM. He played at 9 v Saints as we had no other halves. Obv Wane didn't rate/have faitj in Tomkins or fancied a much stronger 17. I guess that was wrong too.