Thuggery at Wigan? Never!

He claims in the press conference that no-one was rested, all were forced absences.

The error count and missed tackles from a combined 4 players in Josh, Goulding, Smithy, and JJ told the story today. Worst I seen these four players play. Weakened side or not when your so called first choice players perform like that it puts unnecessary pressure on the young lads that have been brought in to do a job. Positives: Liam Farrell has found the form he showed at the start of last season which will give stains some pre game nightmares and I think Flower, Burke and Hughes went well contributing over 120 tackles between them not much more to add really on a pretty sorry performance.

Playing St Helens is not about the points, never has been and hopefully never will be.

I was there and Wigan looked to be running on empty. Body language coming out for second half was not good with heads bowed and no energy, yet we started the half well, we just ran out of steam in the last 15 mins of both halves.

Ref I thought was ok.
Nothing in the on report incidents for me.
Ryan forearmed Gelling on the floor in a tackle that made him react but it was handbags.
Similarly Matty Smith was embarrassed to be put on his backside by Ryan and reacted, again nothing in it.
Possible spear tackle by Liam Farrell will be looked at but player seemed to land safely on his back.

Key for me was as Bilko said we couldn't cope with Moore and especially Tautai when they came on.
Good game, disappointing, but more enthusiastic team won on the day.

Bye bye Bradford & London.

Yeh i think we can forgive 1 missed tackle in a game though, it's when you start missing 3 or four and stacking up the error count. When on our own line our big lads let in quite a lot of soft trys the moore and washbrook trys were pretty poor efforts.

28 points should have been enough to win it, but our try line defence was very soft. I think we conceded three or maybe four tries from one pass from the ptb. No matter how young the players are they should have played enough rugby to get their bodies in front of the attacker.

I think had that try not been disallowed which would have put us 24 - 6 we would have won the game comfortably. Also it was poor execution for the forward pass disallowed try that would have given us the lead late on. it was a simple two on one pass and catch.

Harsh but true.

All? Are you sure? The only one he mentions in Wigan TV over and above Bateman and MM which we knew about was Lockers who banged his knee in training (another training injury!) and wasn't even in the original 19 anyway. Are Dudson, Crosby, Burgess and Manfredi all injured?

I have my doubts and think this was another of Wane's "Widnes moments" where despite a lot of absentees he make matters worse by deciding to play several different players out of choice not because he had to.

Manfredi is injured as is Burgess (although I don't believe Burgess is too serious) Don't know about Crosby but Dudson did have an ear infection prior to the Cas game which caused him to have to miss that game.

Well going down won't do Bradford or London much good either and in my opinion Wigan had a duty to put its strongest side out and not effectively hand one of Bradford's relegation rivals an easier game and eventually a win.

It used to be the rule you had to put your strongest side out but that rule was changed a while ago so you had to pick a side from your named SL squad. The RFL tried to fine Saints £25K for sending a reserve side the Bradford (ironically enough) a few seasons ago after this rule came in. They had to back down when they read their own rules.

It is what resulted in the squad naming rule coming in which means supporters are aware who who is likely to play before they travel but it does nothing to solve the problem of a coach putting out a weak side against teams involved in the relegation fight.

Wane didn't break any rules by fielding the side he did but with P&R we need to return to the rule of a club/coach must always put its strongest team out.

This just isn't feasible though. Just to play devil's advocate:

Who decides what your strongest team is? If you asked 100 fans of every club to name their strongest 17 then they wouldn't all agree. So one man's strongest team won't be the same as the next man's.
Who is going to come and check whether a reported injury is genuine or not? Are the RFL going to force clubs to prove that a certain player is injured, and if so, how?
Does a coach not have the right to rest and rotate his team as he sees fit? What is the point in naming a 25 man squad and then picking the same 17 every week?

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