How do I know.
Ainscough would have had the pace or experience to put himself in that position.

Sam is not a great creative ball playing half back (yet), he's more of a finisher.

How do you know they would?
What have you seen in those players in those situations to make you think differently, and how many times have you seen them?

Oh for God's sake give up on the "how many times have you seen them" argument. I have seen them in most of their SL games either live, on TV or on DVD.

I base my opinions on evidence.

Early season we were poor in every department, especially attack.

Then by more luck than judgement, Ainscough and Tomkins get in the side.

All of a sudden we do not look like a one dimensional attacking force.

Tonight both don't play and we run out of ideas. Coincidence? Not IMO.

I am not the only one to think along these lines am I?

Defensively Ainscough's stats prove he isn't as far off the pace as some would like to believe.

Dave

There's no way Tomkins should of been dropped for tonights game. Does Noble enjoy knocking their confidence.

You cant polish a turd and whatever way you look at it, Noble's decision was turd.

Regardless of the usual suspects riding their hobby horses here, the game was always going to be tight and a gamebreaker of either Tomkins or Ainscough was glaringly missing. if you're going to rest one fine but you can't afford to remove the spark that they provide from the team completely.

of course nobby was wrong.
as soon as i heard the selection i said that wed be ok if we start well, but that if we go behind, then we have no one to come on and add a bit of life (which is what was happening in feb/mar).

so nobby has taken out the 2 players who have been able to inject a little something exra, and therefore suffered when we needed a lift.
i can understand the situation with the back 3, but to leave both out was an appalling error of judgement.

given his brothers performances this year, i would have been happier swapping joel and sam, rather than go in with the bench we had tonight

Well we were short of attacking options and the youngsters seem to know nothing else but attack. So bad calls by Nobby !

Get yourselves down to watch the reserves play at Orrell today against Hull KR... You can watch all the Wigan Stars there....

Sam Tomkins is Attacking threat with ball in hand and surely having a player who can score tries without needing to offload is the rain is a far better option than going with "No show Riddell"

Surely "our great leader" would have seen that in the rain Tim Smith's attacking(passing) ability would have been vastly reduced and having another option on the bench in case things weren't going our way, would have been "given" as far as I am concerned. I just couldn't believe it when I heard he was out of the team..

I knew a few weeks ago when we "just" beat Wakefield that Nobby would start getting some plaudits and his job would become safer, I still am of the opinion that this man is tactically poor and with this side is unable to take us any further in our quest for honours...

Inept decision from an Inept coach

Tomkins has already become a gamebreaker for us - evidenced by the try he scored against Wakefield.

For me the game was crying out for that kind of move close to the line all night - especially against the big men who at times were slipping in the defensive line.

The problem is Smith is a "robot" conditioned to play a certain way with ball distribution his forte - last night was not the conditions for that.

in which case the coach is even more palpably at fault.

we executed a game plan which was designed around a wet weather game of attrition. nobby must have known that with defences lining up across the field, and fancy handling at a minimum, then breaking the line was going to be hard. therefore playing as key playmaker, a man used to hot weather and hard pitches sounds even more nonsensical.


our tries were scored by people running at defenders at pace, with quick direction changes causing defenders to slip - sounds a bit like a sam t trademark that !

Is it too obvious a mistake for "Our great Leader" to be blamed for it?

A mate of mine was talking to Sam before the game. Sam explained he had been dropped and that he was absolutely gutted and had been desperate to play


Also, why the fook make the lad change into his shorts, boots & training top to kick a ball about for 20 minutes in the pi$$ing down rain if he has no chance of playing?

Any reason given to Tomkins by noble for being dropped? MattyB

I does rain Australia you know.They don't like to tell you this but it does.....often.