I have not read through all this but I appreciate there will be posts defending and slating Wane particularly in the build up to the Leeds game.

My personal opinion is this. Wane has had a good first season as a top flight coach, better than I expected in truth.

He has made mistakes, but again it is his first season. The key now is how he reacts to those mistakes and develops as a coach.

Cullen at Wire came through a similar background at Warrington, club stalwart very close to the players etc and he started well, he did however in my opinion allow himself to get too close to the players and repeatedly make the same mistakes season after season which ultimately cost him his coaching career.

Wane is now at a very important stage in his coaching development he will get things wrong in the future but the key is that he does not repeat the errors that he has made this season on top of those.

If he does learn I have no doubt he has the potential to be a great Wigan coach for years to come, if he does not, quite simply he will be replaced.

Sam said yesterday Wigan realized he would be missing 2 days before the game.

Ah nvm then it was made out on Sky that it was around 1.5 hours before the match.

If you're interested in an outsider's perspective I reckon Wane's done pretty well. He may have over invested in the regular season a little but which newly-appointed coach would deliberately run the risk of getting off to a poor start by holding his players back? And before someone says McDermott, he inherited a team much more knowledgeable about winning GFs than he was and which almost certainly, maybe subconsciously, knew to keep a bit in reserve which resulted in their coach attracting as much flak as Wane seems to be drawing now. And be honest, Wane's been pretty unlucky that you didn't win at least one of the semis. Be a shame if he gets the boot prematurely, we don't produce too many great coaches over here and I reckon, based on what I've seen, that Wane could be a pretty good one given the chance.

I've read some but not all of this but as a Wire fan one thing that i've noticed is that it appears that occasionally Wane's mouth runs away with him.
By that I mean he allows his words to be used as motivation by the opposition.
I know Wire have done that.
Maybe it is good for Wigan to hear it but if I was a player and heard the same type of thing many times it would have less impact than if I was an opposition player and only heard in once a year.

Top level sport is all about 1%'s.
You don't give those away for free.

Brett Kenny would have been awesome at prop, Brett Kenny was just, awesome.

The only thing Wane needs to do is keep his mouth shut ala Madge.

The players making dumb mistakes cost us this season. Play smarter and that doesn't happen.

As ever there are a fair few over reactions.

People seem to forget when talking about Madge vs Wane that we didn't have a winning end to the season - we lost two play off games to Saints and were a lot further away from getting to the GF then we were this season.

This season we were;
a couple of minutes away from the GF,
a dropped catch on our line away,
a misplaced attacking pass on Leeds line away - allowing leeds a free run to score their only try
a should have been given penalty in the last minute for holding down away,
a single better decision by experienced players in Tommy/Finch when attacking their line in the last few minutes away,

Sure we should on paper haven't been under that pressure from leeds - but they played out of their skins and made their own luck - but there really wasn't much in it.

He's getting an awful lot of stick for a a season where he came a gnats chuff away from getting to the GF

But we won the cup! This season even without having the reaction to winning the cup which was obvious - the team more or less stopped playing - we still didn't get to the GF. You can't compare the two without taking into account the cup win in 2011.



He deserves it. Saying we were a gnats chuff away from the GF so its OK is just papering over the cracks in the way he has coached the side. There are lots of specific critisims which if you look back over the year were mentioned at the time so its not hindsight. These mistakes added up to give us the end result and of course one of his last mistakes was saved to the semi final itself, picking a rookie full back in a play off semi final. That is just naive.

I hope he doesn't think because we were a few minutes away form a GF this justifies how he has coached the side this year because if he does we won't even be in contention next year given the drop in quality in the side.

I am sure IL will want an inquest and won't consider it merely bad luck, rub of green we finished as we did.

Pity Wire never got a reaction to winning the cup this season. That is now a flawed argument used by people for our play off failure last season. Leeds and Wire will play the maximum games available in SL and the CC. Leeds will in fact play 2 more given the WC and the extra play off they have to play. So Dave stop using THE REACTION TO WINNING THE CC for last seasons play off failure.

Problem we have the supporters expects us to go out and win every game. Tony Smith has the luxury of not having that problem and look now he is going to do the double something people thought impossible last season as Maguire's side failed miserably in the play offs.

Personally i think Wane is a perfect number 2 for Wigan. Great rapport with the home grown players and young lads that hes brought through. However when it comes to big games we need more than his 'yer no were gonna be big n tuff and theyll no theyve bin in a game' Warrington pasted us at the HJ it was an embarrassment as was the cup semi at Hudds whether they had a few dodgy tries or not. Im not sure whether its all down to Wane or whether some of it is due to the experience that we keep losing seems like every year and lets be honest not replacing. Over the last few years losing Deacon Coley Hoffman Riddell Gleeson Joel and now Tommy Finch Fielden Carmont and Lima. Lets compare that to whose come in Luaki Smith Green and bringing Thornley back. Dress it up how you want but next year is our weakest side from when we nearly went down by along long way.

So sorry, you are obviously correct and everyone else knows nothing.

I disagree, he needs to get the team playing the Australian way. Had he done so there would have been more silverware in the cupboard.

We play that way anyway which is why everyone criticises our style of play