I didn't say it was an excuse. You said you were tired of seeing Pat Richards' early poor form being used as cover for Roberts, and then gave your reason why that example is irrelevant. I merely pointed out that there are other examples too, which are perhaps not so easily dismissed. Lammy did very little at first. Gene Miles's first half-season was a disaster, and those are all what I'd call 'world class' players.

We should also remember that Roberts was on the comeback trail from a hand operation. He missed his first match, if memory serves, because he was still deemed to be unfit - now surely that's a reasonable excuse?

Craig Smith played for three seasons and overall along with O'Connor was arguably our best front rower since the days of Platt/Skerett/Cowie. We certainly missed him when he went and have not had a better prop since IMO.

id agree with this 100%

Amos is now starting to show the form many expected. I also thought that he was getting a bit of a raw deal earlier in the season, how was he supposed to get any chances if the ball just kept going to the lleft every single time!

I also think that now he is settled and has his family around him will help him improve his game, and no matter what anyone says moving to a new country without your family around you WILL affect you, obviously it affects some players more than others, but Amos in particular was without his wife and newborn child. Anyone who doesn't cut him some slack for being in that situation needs to go support someone else!

Agreed

Anyone who was at the Bradford game will tell you that his confidence has definatley improved, the way he took that superb high ball in the corner under pressure reflects that.

However, despite this we still lack fire up front and if the money paid to Roberts could of been paid to secure a quality prop for this season then im sure we would be in a better position in the league that what we are in at the moment.

Do you really think so?

To me he is never a prop. He is the wrong body type for starters.

Plus his forte is running out wide.

So if Roberts apparently players don’t go through bedding in periods what was the reason for Roberts poor form in the first few games? People are quick to dismiss that players don’t suffer from settling in periods but yet offer zero alternatives to a players poor form.

If he was either untalented, over here for a pay day or finished injury wise we wouldn’t be seeing the good form he’s producing currently so I can’t think of another reason other than he took time settling in?

I really can’t see what the problem is?

It makes me laugh how the same certain people try to shoot down people on here that dare to defend or give reasons for a players poor performance or praise players when they do come into form.

It’s happened this season with Coley, Roberts, Tommy and Riddell were if you try to say he’s in good form at the moment there’s always a person who will pop up and complain about it or try to pick a pointless hole in it. Same goes for IL as well he does something good but some people will always pick fault in it.

It’s almost like they want players/administrators to fail at this club?

At the end of the day I’m a Wigan RLFC fan and if a player like Roberts, Riddell or Coley start playing well for us I’ll acknowledge it no matter which of my ‘favourite players’ he replaced from the previous season.

As said Smith did 3 years, and his first year wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either. His second and third seasons were immense and him and O'connor were superb.

Roberts has started to show form now, and looks dangerous. Having a decent centre, and the players inside him creating options is essential for any winger. It's no coincidence that the team has started to create more, and he's scoring more.

How do you explain any player going off form and how long do you think a bedding in periods should be? A few weeks or 3/4 of a season?

For a player of Roberts experience it should be a few weeks but it has been 3/4 of a season. That is the issue.



The fact he should have been up to speed after about a month? Then again [iwhy not[/i frorm day one? I can't remember if he came over pre-season or not but if he didn't why not and if he did, why not hit the gorund running given his experience?



Let me ask you this then. How long is it acceptable for a players form to be poor?



Certain players have had more bad games than good, some of them have taken IMO far too long to find any form and none of the players in question have yet played consistently well enough for long enough.

Roberts is being talked of as if he hit some sort of seriously good form. If he keeps improving to the end of the season that will be good to see but you can't get away form the fact his form has been patchy at best over the season so far and I have yet to see him show the pace he is supposed to have, so that part of his form has not yet surfaced.

Dave

But in the last couple of seasons, Dave, there've been quite a few Wigan players whose form has been poor-to-average. Goulding did almost nothing last year. Calderwood did nothing 'til virtually his last game. Leuleuai was patchy, Feka and Coley were patchy, Mathers and Fielden were downright dreadful. Bailey, Hansen, even Lockers (last year, not this year) were all a disappointment. Even Barrett had a slow season by his own standards. This year I've only just started to be impressed by Prescott and Phelps. Pryce hasn't impressed me once so far. Hell, that's not far off the entire lot.

I'm not making an excuse for Roberts here, but - and I'm sure you won't totally disagree with me on this - it may say something about the coaching when so many talented players are either being used incorrectly, are badly conditioned or are not being motivated sufficiently.

What I will say about Roberts, who I thought was an odd signing at the time and who didn't seem to do anything in his first few games, is that I'm now noticing him more and more each week. He's much more of a threat now than he was initially.

Is it fair that he's replaced Ainscough? Well, I think Ainscough was badly done to by Noble - he had weaknesses in his game, but it was wrong to just drop him like that. However, that's Noble all over and, as I've said before, I have an issue with it. Again though, I'll pose the question. Was Ainscough, who normally played on the left, actually replaced by Roberts, who plays on the right? If Ainscough can play on the right as well as on the left, then fair enough - I didn't know about that. But it strikes me that Ainscough has been more a casualty of the full-back situation. Mathers didn't work out. Initially we moved Richards there, which opened the door for Ainscough on the left wing. But then Phelps started to show his usefulness at the rear, and this coincided with Ainscough's apparent weakness under the high ball, so we were grateful to stick Phelps at 1 and move Pat back to 5. I reiterate, I'm not on Noble's side here - I didn't like the way he did it. But that's my reading of the situation. I didn't see much direct competition between Ainscough and Roberts.

Not sure how relevant to the argument this is but I've just watched the DVD of the Bradford game and Amos was pure class (overall team performance notwithstanding)