Was it really that depleted? I’m not sure but nevertheless you have a point. Irrespective of whether we were full strength, half strength or whatever that’s a great result.

As I said on another thread; play off rugby is a different ball game. It’s conservative type tough rugby with strong defences and generally low scores. I agree with Sgt pepper in that I’d rather win 12-0 (or in this case 12-icon_cool.gif than 50-44.

Great result, and much unexpected from me anyway. Happy to say I was wrong about this result and here’s hoping I, and a few others, are proved wrong once again in the coming weeks.

Just for clarity - Lam still should go.

As José Murinho says - if you stop your opposition from scoring you can’t lose. And Adrian Lam’s philosophy of scoring one more try than the opposition has a similar ring to it. As I recall, a certain Shaun Wane had a similar philosophy.

And in finals footy that works for me as it is builds excitement . But in the normal season games it is boring. So a blend of both is required from the new coach.

It would be a boring old world SP if we all liked the same things.
I’d take the Madge rugby of say versus Wire in the CC of 2011 every week of the year.

We play every game for a 12-6 result. That type of score in RL is the exception not the general. I said it earlier in the season if you play every 80 minutes of every game as an arm wrestle you going to lose as many as you win. We play for a 12-6 because we incapable of scoring more tries. I just think that it’s a sad and pretty depressing way to approach a game. Playing to nil your opponent for me is the prerequisite for every game but it doesn’t mean that you don’t look to post a shed full of tries.

Currently we play a slow methodical no risk rugby with nothing to get you off your seat. I quite “happily” queued for 15 minutes for a pint last night pretty confident I wouldn’t miss anything. I didn’t. That is not the frame of mind I should have watching my team.

Last night and most games the play with the FB in the line is a kick over the top. It’s never utilised. In Marshall we have arguably the fastest winger in the competition so you’d think that we would use that asset with regularity. We never do. How many tries in 3 years has Marshall scored by running more than 10 yards? Very few and the one occasion where he kicked an ran the full length of the pitch to score in added on time he was “worried” what the coach would have said if the kick hadn’t come off. Even our backs play with a “stats” mentality. A high completion rate is great if you win but like all other stats pretty meaningless on their own.

An improvement last night for sure but it still won’t win trophies or just as importantly more fans.

Funnily enough the first half for me flew by, most of this season it’s been like water torture. The second half was more like the usual too many early set mistakes in our own half. I have to commend the defence and the kicking game that was much improved. Without Marshall we look woefully short of pace, Gildart made some breaks that Marshall could have exploited. Clubb looks fatter than ever, as a so called leader of the group you would have thought he would be busting a gut to go out on a high. Looking to next week I wouldn’t have Clubb or Bullock near the team they offer little for the minutes they play. If we lose a forward through injury I wouldn’t be confident they could play more than a 15 min spell. I thought Byrne went well, Harvard a few errors he seems to be trying too hard and overplaying in the wrong areas. There was a nice touch were Isa came across to have a chat with him.

There needs to be some attacking threat through the middle, any breaks backed up otherwise we will be back to shuffling across the pitch and picked off by the opposition.

I thought Byrne was really good last night, he would have been excellent apart from that one dropped ball. He reminds me of a young Ryan Sutton in the respect of he always seems to have one error per game, but he is a big body and we tend to forget he has only just turned twenty-two years of age so is a "baby" in prop age.

He’s battling for consistency Byrne but when he gets it right he’s a good player. I look at props around the league at the ages of 27-30 and there aren’t many that would’ve been playing as regular as Byrne was at 20/21 and not many playing as well as he can do when he is at his best. The thing we really need to do is keep guys like Byrne and Partington until they reach their peaks and let us have the benefit of that and not another team. I read somebody saying Byrne was too small the other day. I’m not sure which lad they were looking at. He’s a great size for a young prop and will put natural size on throughout the years.

When the teams were lined in front of us up for the one minutes applause for Barbara I said to my son that Byrne looked about 1 to 1 1/2 stone heavier than Clarke.

He’ll be a unit in a few years. It’s the same with Havard. He’s got a great physique to build on. What we can’t do is throw our eggs in the development basket to the degree we are and then lose them. There’s been so much talk of Havard going to the NRL that you fear he’ll go the same way as Sutton. It gets to the point where you fear us developing young props becomes pointless, as you’re not going to get your rewards when they hit 25/26/27+. If love to think we can get Havard tied up for another 4 or 5 years ASAP.

Just shows how important goal kicks are to back up a tremendous defence effort.
For once we were better than the opposition in that department,
Could have ended up being a difficult (and unjust) situation if Maloney had brought his kicking boots.

I've been saying the same for a while now. Byrne, at worst, will be a good SL prop when he's older & I hope he does another 10+ years with us.

I look around the league and see guys like Mossop, Dudson, Satae, Millington etc who are all good SL props, but it's fair to say they only really hit their straps at 27 +. That's 6 years away for Byrne. Heck, even Walmsley signed for Saints at 21 - Byrne has already done 50 + SL games at that age. Now I'm not saying he's in Walmsley's class, but it's not OTT to use stuff like that to show how young he is.

At the same time however, we can't have too many young forwards in the squad. It's not helping their development & it's not helping the side either. It might sound harsh, but I'd reluctantly be happy to see Partington move on. That's not because he's a bad player, but because we've got Byrne, Havard, KPP, Smithies & others too. That's enough youth imo. If we could add Partington's salary to the extra £75k and get a prop in for the 'here and now', then it benefits the guys mentioned above + the team too.

The "here and now" is next season and have we not signed two NRL forwards for then or am I only dreaming it.

Personally, I don't think it's enough. I'd have loved a 150 game + veteran to go alongside what we've got. The two guys might be great, but I'm sure they've hardly got 50 NRL appearances between them.

Yeah it's a load of rubbish that we're playing Madge-style rugby anyway. It was structured for sure, but we scored points for fun. In two seasons under Maguire there were a grand total of six games where we didn't manage to score at least three tries. We have done that 12 times this year alone under Lam. We could score from anywhere on the pitch under Maguire as demonstrated in the 2010 Grand Final amongst other games. No comparison whatsoever.

If you look at the present squad, you will see that for most of the season it has had only twenty six players actually playing due to long term injuries to players like French and Field and seasons loans of Hankinson and Roden when normally, the club has a first team squad in the thirties. If you then take into account, other week by week injuries and a more than normal number of suspensions, the club has played all the other clubs home and away and the Magic game even when on some occasions it has struggled to raise a squad of 21 players for a game. Even Clubb, who now plays with only one kidney has given 100% to help out the club in its situation.

Who would be a Coach when week by week, he has never been able to play a regular and consistent squad without positional changes for a full fixture list of 23 games under such difficult circumstances of the past two seasons.

Lam may not be the perfect choice as first team coach in the eyes of supporters, but is he any worse than the proposed favourite to replace him who has neve been a First Team Coach of any club and has been part of the present coaching team appointed by the club as his assistants!

If he is appointed, it would appear to be more about saving even more money rather than getting a well known and successful head coach from either within our own game or down under!

Given the circumstances of the last two season, the players should be applauded for getting the fourth place in the play off's and in with a chance of winning the trophy.

p.s. We only only lost in the final last season because a bad mistake near the end of the game which was hardly the coaches fault.

This is my big worry. If you could guarantee all Partington, Byrne, Smithies and particularly KPP and Havard would be Wigan players for the next 10 years id be very excited about the club.

Think KPP and Havard are serving there NRL apprenticeship and we won’t reap the rewards.