Given wire had just 2 home grown playersin their 17 tonight Cooper and wood it lookasl ike they cant even buy a title

Chris Riley? Ben Harrison is too isn't he? Just he left and came back.

Not one to stick up for wire but we need to play fair lol

They have a few more than that but the GUN players (hodgson morley et al) have all been bought in.

Will they be back at old trafford? will they finally end their 57 (now going to be at least 5icon_cool.gif year wait for the title? Who knows, but they'll have the same team next year, and none of their rivals look significantly stronger, although saints will be an uknown quanitity with the new coach and hull are bound to come good soon the amount of players they are brining in.

So I feel they may be back, but next season will be a whole new ball game and none of the other teams are going to roll over just because they feel it should be their time.

Overturning 58 years without a title is going to be tremendously difficult for them.

Fair play to Leeds, I don't think they intend on finishing 5th but they are a team made of champion players who produce champion performances. However the play off system needs to be looked at. There is no advantage for the team who finishes top and that is wrong. The RFL have devalued finishing top of the league unfortunately

You never know. Leeds winning it from 5th again may just force the super league chiefs into changing something. Credibility for the sport is waning and something needs doing and quick.

The way Stevo and Eddie big the system up though i doubt anything will happen.

Stevo had an article in the Saturday Times saying back to top 5 play off maybe league winners straight to final and 2 comps of 10 teams. He also wanted the return of GB. He also talked about lack of fan interest in the CC and play off early rounds.

I think Saints are the main unknown factor. It will be too early for Hull to be challengers. But Saints are in a similar position to where Wigan were under Noble and when Wigan brought Maguire they were ready straight away. I'm not totally sure Brown is the real deal but he did do pretty well with Huddersfield so he might be.

Wigan I feel are slipping slightly backwards. I'm surprised at the standard of players you are signing. Matty Smith and Blake Green are not Wigan standard players. You're dependent on Tomkins to give you an edge over the rest and reliance on one player is not healthy, Wigan were in this position ten years ago with Farrell. Wigan will still be up there but I don't see you moving forwards.

With us I think we have got one more year of this current team, then there will be a dip when we lose a lot of key players at the same time and might drop out of trophy contention for a while (although I don't think we will implode). Probably the same can be said of Leeds.

Wigan do have a good proportion of good young players in their squad so are well placed for the future but an Arsenal situation might develop, Wigan need to sign about 3 really good experienced players with leadership. Wire and Leeds have more experienced senior players than Wigan. Much as you probably hate both of them, if Wigan had had either Briers or Sinfield in the team in the past few years you would have won more trophies.

Is that a wind up?

Briers vs Finch or Tommy. Finch = SOO and NRL gf winner. Tommy = SL GF winner + WORLD CUP winner. You don't get much more experience than that. Briers has none of that.

The only reason Wigan failed this season was down to Shaun Wane and his neanderthal tactics and training methods.

Attack wins games, defence wins championships

Maguire knew that Wane doesn't.

We had NRL grand final winners, SL GF winners, Men of steel & world cup winners in our side but won sweet FA.

All because we thought we were the dogs balls in July. No point racking up points in meaningless games if you can't walk the walk in the big games.

I don't care if we won every game 4-0 as long as we won the GF.

Point a diff, derby wins, victories in June mean nothing. GF wins are the be all and end all

They are, absolutely.

But we weren't undone by our coach being a 'neanderthal'. We conceded 2 tries in 160 minutes of playoff rugby, and went out by a point after our NRL organiser in chief panicked and forgot how to play smart rugby when leading a semi final by a point with 5 minutes left.

We could easily have been there last night if we'd have been smarter in the last 10 minutes against Leeds, but that wasn't Wane's fault, so stop looking for a scapegoat in him. If we'd have swapped Sinfield for Finch in that game last week, we'd have won it.

Have I missed something??....Have we been kicked out of the league or something???....

Or god forbid, Ryan Bailey.