Poor positioning at full back, poor handling and just a generally disappointing second half to the season for me. I'd really like to see Hampshire or whomever given a chance to make the fullback position their own next season. Bowen's performance today matched his display against Warrington...both really poor. Definitely miles past his best.

Not good or consistent enough to continue for Wigan, very poor with simple mistakes in the big games. Hopefully he will be on the plane home for good this year.

Said all week he's the go to man for us. Put him under pressure and he's a accident waiting to happen.

We didn't test him enough IMO.

That overlap that he bombed and then tried the pass to Bateman summed his shocker of a day up. I'd be all for binning him and giving Hampshire time to learn on the job. He tears it up in the 19s when he plays and given the off season it a time we took the handbrake off with him. Bowen is an international, grand final experienced player who played like he was making his debut in the first team.

Can't believe people are criticising anyone in that team apart from Flower. What about Bowen's try saver? You going to criticise Matty Smith while you're at it? We almost beat saints playing with 12 men for basically 80mins. We were awesome out there. Saints were terrible and only just managed to beat us. The rest of the team deserve a huge pat on the back, not criticism.

Just saying what I saw, collective effort was good obviously. I just don't feel value for money in Bowen's signing is there for next year when we have talent that needs to be given a run.

If it wasn't for the massive let-down from Flower, Bowen's (lack of) performance would be the main topic (apart from the win).
Really poor tonight. Odd bursts of brilliance don't counter the number of unforced errors he made.

You can't really say that, because you have no idea what kind of performance Bowen would have put in, had Flower stayed on...

Bowen and a few others were panicking because playing under pressure that hadn't been planned for was something they obviously couldn't cope with.
True, perhaps MB might have had a good game in different circumstances, but it's not the first time he's had a mare of game & 80 or 90 yard runs every now & again don't excuse lazy play at the back or sloppy handling that should come as second nature.

How do you plan on playing with 12 men for 78mins?!?!

Lazy play? Bowen made some good yards tonight, helped get the ball out wide and pulled off a couple of big tackles.

If you're going to slag him off, why not have a dig at Pettybourne and Matty Smith while you're at it? I'm much more disappointed in Flower than Bowen tbh...

Overall Bowen has been disappointing, partly because he was such an exciting and dangerous player in the NRL. His reading of the game is still very good, which is why he gets himself in the right place at the right time to make those try saving hits. That's a part of his game that can't be faulted. His broken field running has also been impressive where he's scored some stunning tries.

However, the errors, the poor attacking play and the ineffectiveness in the attacking line are reasons why he hasn't been good enough. Our best fullback by a long way this year has been Sarginson. It's still an unfamiliar position for him but he looked far more comfortable with ball in hand and didn't make any of the errors Bowen has.

Hopefully for Bowen it's just another case of an Aussie having a difficult first season. He won't be the first or the last. The worry is that he's been so far below what he's shown he's capable of in the NRL. Maybe the Cowboys were right after all and he didn't have another year in him at the highest level.

Think Bowen should go home and retire and take Pettybourne with him we get rid of 'Eric' and buy another waste of space,

Think Bowen should go home and retire and take Pettybourne with him we get rid of 'Eric' and buy another waste of space,

+1

Where do all these people come from every time we lose a big game? Most of you have said little or nothing all year, suddenly you come on spouting about how we need to start making wholesale changes. It would have a lot more credibility if you had said it when we were winning games.