We'll hopefully pull everything together for the start if the season in 4 weeks time.

Pre season is always a good time to blow away the cobwebs.

I'll throw my 2 pence in to this philosophy.

This time last year, yes you had lost xyz in the run up to the playoffs, and it was a tactic that worked very well (clearly) - but in the first half of the season, you had completely dominated, and it gave the sense that there was more to come during that bad patch.

I just (as an outsider) don't feel the same sense of foreboding coming from this Wigan team compared to last year, and it will take a lot more this time around to turn poor form around (supposing the trend continues)

Add to it that a lot of the concentration/distraction 12 months ago was on the CC whereas this year it isn't.

But there's no poor form, just extreme inconsistency. (last 5 games: excellent, very good, rubbish, very good, very poor).

I agree to a point. Where I do feel comfort is from the fact that the other top teams have more issues then last year. You guys have been much better but injuries have robbed you of a chance of winning the GF IMO. Wire aren't as strong nor are Huddersfield and Leeds and Cas have the CC final to contend with.

I also get comfort from the big wins we've had this year and that they have all come when we have been written off a touch. Wire away was meant to be a defeat, Good Friday was all about an onfire Saints, Leeds at the magic weekend was meant to be a stuffing and a team hadn't won at Catalans for months.

We're a big game team IMO.

It was far from the issue tonight though, infact Green was probably our best player although Smith really struggled.

All about attitude tonight.

You'd have got nothing had the vid ref correctly disallowed your first try. Regardless of that please accept that it was the fact we kept you quiet and not that you played rubbish.

Got out of jail big time penalties are killing us, most of them deserved by the way but the season starts after Widnes away

Occasionally good teams play poorly. Also occasionally, poor teams play well (especially when they are facing the reality of their season ending with naught). Occasionally (again) these will coincide. The end of the world is not nigh.

Chester's tactics were to cut off our playmakers from the outside runners. This worked until the very end. Farrell was hardly seen all night. Gelling and Sarginson were overcrowded and stopped, they could hardly get a pass away. We were slow out of dh which addedto our problems. HKR loked like they wanted far more than us.
Another case of scoring "too early" with hardly working for it and then thinking the game was won, after 2 mins. We relaxed, made numerous errors and allowed HKR into the game.
Once HKR got going they were easily the better team. Then we couldn't pick it up again until Williams gave us that pace up the middle.
With all the teams around us having gimme games we could be 4th perhaps by Sunday night.

Stats beg to differ Saints 6 0 2 45 12
Huddersfield 4 1 3 -24 9
Wigan 4 0 5 21 8
Leeds 3 2 4 2 8
Castleford 3 1 5 -20 7
Warrington 3 0 4 -24 6
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it was a good showing from your fans, stayed right till the end and got your reward.

The context of the games we have won have been important though. We win when we're told we've got no chance yet in games like ours at the DW, the Cas cup game and our two Huddersfield games we've been well beaten after going in to them on a weeks worth of back slapping about how good we are.

The greater the challenge, the more they're written off the better this team seems to play. The most dangerous thing that could happen for other teams leading up to the play offs is that we limp along and start to get written off. If we go in flying that over confidence will probably cost us.

played 2 big games all year and lost them both, I agree with what hes saying last year we were awesome at the start of the year and knew we had lots of improvement. This year I dont see it,

What's that?