The result and performance may well reflect the rest of the season. Full of commitment but not quite good enough. Hope I'm wrong.
Positives: Clubb & Bateman. Also thought Williams at times was good and he did look to take the Broncos on.
Negatives: agree with majority on lack of quality in the front row aside Clubb. I just don't see what Patrick gives us. Biggest negative is the constant kick and hope on the last tackle near the opposition line. Can't we mix it even occasionally?
Not a great game but like the Wire match a close contest that could have gone either way

We are missing Scott Taylor and Blake Green badly.

Valiant effort from the team but Im not convinced we have got it right with recruitment.

And a FB. Bowen is awful.

I have a very strong dislike of Bateman but he looks a real player. On the down side, there was zero atmosphere which was disappointing for a big crowd. Burgess should be dropped for Mandfredi too, seems like his heart isn't in it.

Positives: another well supported competitive game to further cement the concept of the World Club Series.

Negatives: the pitch.

This 100%. The structures worked so well because of Tomkins' pace and skill out the back. Bowen is in nowhere near the same league in terms of skill and is much slower than Sam and as a result the structured attacking play is less effective. It's also much easier to read which makes the short ball to the 2nd rowers less threatening. It's one of the reasons I thought Hampshire should have been molded in to the fullback role, but he looks so unassured defensively. If Thornley gets back to full fitness I'd be tempted to play him and Gelling in the centres with Sarg moving to FB.

Our pack was dominated for most of last night and the halves didn't offer enough. That was plain to see. But suggestions of "our structures have been found out" etc are nonsense, it's more that a player who regularly contributed to 50+ tries (by scoring or assisting) a season has been taken out of thoses systems and replaced with someone who is a good player in their own right but doesn't offer anywhere near as much in attack.

Then clearly we don't have the ability to play those systems so why are we still trying to?

That's the million dollar question really isn't it. Especially without Lockers in the team we don't have any additional playmakers other than the halves. Bateman played excellently last night but he'll never be an extra pivot, ball playing LF. We need either a creative FB or LF to help out a very inexperienced HB partnership.

JESUS CHRIST.

Because we have a tactically dumb coach who is still living of the systems of another coach.
He does not know how to coach to his players strengths, he is not clever enough.

Just got back home after another enjoyable weekend in Wigan with my son. Agree with most of the above comments, our defence was both better disciplined and much stronger; time after time a charging Sam Thaiday was stopped dead in his tracks, something that's not easy to do and was quite a sight. And who was it who raced back to pull off a flying try-saving tackle when the Broncos broke away in the second half and looked to have about a three on one? Impressive, whoever it was.

Attack remains a big disappointment, though. How many times did we throw the ball across the back-line, only for a winger to be pushed into touch? Very poor. I've generally liked Matty Smith, but agree he needed to really step up to the plate with Blake Green gone (and also to show some leadership to our young halves), and has so far this season failed to do so. And of course I agree it's much easier to play an unstructured 'Plan B' game when you have someone with the talent of Sam T at your disposal. I always liked Bowen at the Cowboys, but there's no denying he has been a big disappointment for us.

Simms is a good player but didn't play well the other night. I think Aston is the worst of the three sims brothers tho.

Positives
Gelling tried hard
Bateman was excellent
Sarge had a good first game back
Williams actually looked better than Smith


Negatives
Smith was poor especially his kicking game
McIlorum - defensively good but too limited in attack against top teams
Too many unforced errors (Burgess very guilty) - this killed us all game,

A tough game which we almost nicked but the start of the second half was far too poor from Wigan - a better prepared team would have blown us away with that many errors

Speaking of the pitch, the langtree park turf looks pristine!!!

Positives
We weren't playing Souths!