I think he had the devils own job following Madge. People expect results. Personally I want to see him grow as a coach & improve, which I'm positive he will over time.

I think the Wane badgers should have a day off! League leaders and inches away from 2 finals in his 1st season isn't bad. People need to realise that we will never get back to the club that will win everything every season. He will do us proud I'm sure of it.

Spot on! He really does have the job at a tough time. I mean the whole of Super League is in a transition period now and the only way to really build a team is on youth. Saints made the biggest name signings last year in Laffranchi & Hohaia and ended up trying to beat square pegs in to round holes.

He had a relatively good first season with what some might say was Maguire's team. (few signings and tactics etc)

This is now his team. He either signed them, or they came through under during his academy reigns. They have had over 12 months under him as a first team coach and should be ready to step up. He has to deliver this season imo.

Have to disagree, he has come in at a really tough time. How can you say he must deliver with the list of people we have had to let go?

I still think we can have a crack at both trophies though. I'm confident we can get to the semi-final of the cup again and I'm fairly confident of a top 3 finish.

When I say deliver I don't neccessarily mean win a trophy but I think he needs to get us to at least one final.

Having won the GF, CC and finished top twice in the last 3 years we have to kick on and not go backwards otherwise it will be 2007-2009 all over again.

Quite right.

'Nobby' ought not to have his '[iescutscheon'[/i blemished.

He is possibly the best UK coach at the moment

Having said that, he still fall's short very much. And having said that also, that is why I made the point a while ago that we need to have university graduates come into the game and articulate the way forward.

I was at Salford Uni in the 80's. Our current crop of students of every discipline, need to be brought into the game at every level.

Bloody Union code do it.

I don't think that is true. I have seen it said by fans that Wane had a pretty successful season in 2012 winning the league and getting to two semi-finals. Rumour has it IL does not share these views.

every wigan fan Ive spoke to expects next year to not be as good as the one thats just gone due to player turnover.

If IL doesnt share this view then Wane will be in trouble

At a pre-Madge fans forum IL said that his on-field aspirations were to "contest finals" and "match or better Leeds who are (were then) the benchmark". By his criteria 2012 wasn't successful.

Completely agree with that.

Noble was very good at getting us to Semi Finals and IL made it clear that just getting to the SF wasn't good enough for Wigan.

We didn't learn our lesson from the first Leeds SF this year, let's hope the reminder they served us will hammer home the point for 2013.

IL might share that view. I don't think he is daft and so I think he will have his own ideas as to what Wane must do to meet his expectations given the differences in playing staff. I am pretty certain Wane didn't meet them in 2012.

My guess is the raw statistics won't interest IL so much. By this I mean on paper getting to a GF semi final again might seem a good thing but there is a difference between a side that is going into one with a lot of form with the expectation of a win not being unreasonable compared to one that gets there when no one expects them to go further.

If the team plays well and looks well organised and tactically sound but gets beat in a close semi-final Wane may survive that. If it lurches into the semi looking shattered and Wane does something stupid again like playing Murphy getting to the semi won't count for much at all IMO.

I think Wane would have done a lot better if he had given Murphy and Powell game time early in the year when we were beating all and sundry in the league. That way we would have been more prepared for Leuluai and Tomkins' injuries, and McIlorum's ban. This year I would say the same two players again, plus maybe Logan Tomkins, need to be ready to step into the first team, because they're only one injury from a call up unless we want to be forced down the route of putting Richards at 1 (with Gelling or Thornley at 5) or Lockers at 6/9.

Whilst there may be some truth in that, we should also acknowledge that:

Wane has been the far more open to give youngsters game time that his immediate predecessors

Wane got his fingers burnt on 2 occasions when we lost games we should have won, by fielding a weakened side (admittedly against the Bulls most changes were forced rather than optional)

Overall, Wane handled the blooding of youngsters pretty well. However, if we had won the away game at Widnes I am sure that Tomkins, Murphy and Powell would have had more opportunities. The backlash following that defeat forced him into a more conservative approach.

Wane did well at blooding props and second rowers, not that we had any real development need there but when you look at the other positions it's a sad story

Full back
Russell - despite being outstanding in pre-season he got 1 game in position and 1 game on the wing before we sent him off to Hull. We didn't even use him when Sam got injured. He's left now

Murphy - 1 game then thrown in at the deep end in the semi final

Wing
King - 1 game, despite Richards being injured most of the season

Centre
Hughes - Fair play he had plenty game time at centre but I'm hardly alone in thinking that he's a second rower playing out of position. Time will tell on this but I think he would have been smarter giving Gelling or Thornley some game time at centre

Gelling - Still never played centre, despite Carmont missing loads of games through injury and us knowing he was likely to leave at the end of the year. He got game time on the wing where he was pretty poor but we didn't sign him as a winger

Thornley - See Gelling

Half backs
Powell - 1 game despite Leuluai missing loads of games through injury and McIlorum's ban (Smith could have played 9)

Mellor - 3 games then sent out on loan. Didn't get any games when Leuluai got injured or when McIlorum was banned. He's left now

Hooker
Logan Tomkins - I didn't realise until I looked into it that he actually got 9 games! (3 starts and 6 off the bench). Fair play to Wane on that one, it doesn't speak much for Logan though that he didn't come into the reckoning when McIlorum got banned

Last year we only had one first team friendly and went in to the Hudds game very underdone, played poorly and lost.
This year we have Leigh on the 6th Jan, HKR on 13th and Wire the 26th.
Whether we are to have one on the weekend of 19/20th I don't know but those three with the Wire game a week prior to the season start is far better than last year.
Looks like that's one thing SW could have done better last year which he is improving for next season. Lesson learned perhaps?

Maybe.

But just hope that none of our players get injured in any of those matches.

Otherwise, you'll have the same people who last season were whining that we were under-prepared, slating Wane for taking too many risks by playing in "meaningless friendlies".

Basically, our coach is screwed either way when it comes to dealing with people like that.
They will always find some stick or other to beat him with, then claim that they "knew this would happen" all along.

Wane can't win

He fields a young side and the lads are defeated! He gets a load of flak for fielding too many youngsters!

We get beat in the playoffs and everybody says we need to rotate the squad more!

Some of you guys could see the negative in a worldwide cure for a worldwide problem.........!

Wane did a cracking job last year, I for 1 wish him the best for next year!

Defeated before we start.................

Here here!!

We played better rugby than anybody for more games than anybody and the handful of games we lost were by narrow margins. I know people will say we lost when it mattered but it was by the skin of a worms tooth both semi finals.

I can't wait for 6 Jan and for the whole season to unfold.

At last, a bit of positivity.
Roll on 6th January.

I'm sure we had 3 pre-season games last year as well FT (its somewhere on cherryandwhite, but wasnt it Wire, Leigh and Salford ???)
However, we only chose to play a 1st XIII in one of them, so mis-used the opportunity to get everyone up and running for the Giants opener.

The lesson will only have been learned if we either :

play the main squad and get them ready with a few key back-up players get a decent run

OR

play more of the youngsters, but ensure that if they play well, they get into the team for the start of the season

Last season we did neither. However, we did win the hub-cap, so not all bad



SW had an excellent season, but I'm sure that he will admit to 2 main failings. Losing the pressure games through in-discipline (MM, GH principal offenders here), and not blooding the young backs as efficiently as he did the forwards.

There was definitely a trip to HKR away as a friendly last year, as well.

There was.

Absolutely freezing.

SW's team were top of the league which is excellent in his first season as head coach.
No matter who or where you are, if you have been an assistant and then appointed head, after the first year you look at the things that have been done well and also those that could have been done better.
SW I'm sure was no different.
I thought the Salford game was the only one where he played his best 17 that were fit. Wasn't Leigh the U20s? Hudds Lockers test game where all 1st teamers were off the field after 10 mins or so? HKR much the same.
We may have players who cop a knock but that's the risk with trial games. Often we go with 20 players for a friendly too.
Fixtures out, squad announced and season tickets bought, can't wait!

There's some ridiculous criticism of Shaun Wane on this forum, the team did played fantastically in the league last season and gave within a whisker of getting to both finals, if Wane would have decided to make the team take it easy for most of the season it does mean we would have beaten Leeds in both semi's. It's not really up to us fans to tell him how to coach the team , who knows how the 2013 season will pan out? Seems some people just get really bored and spout rubbish during the off season.