Maybe so,but their squad as more quality in depth than ours and will allways have.They will always have the pick of the crop,that's what money and success does I'm afraid,when they played the Roosters that showed that even our best clubs are well behind the ARL.....that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Bowen was out, replaced by Hampshire
Charnley was out replaced by Manfredi
Goulding was out but they already had Sargison in as a replacement so Gelling and Thornley were back in as normal first teamers.
Burgess is clearly now a star man so is a first teamer

Half backs were the same.

And frankly, I'd have rather faced Bowen.

That's fair comment, because of course I wasn't at the game. If I had paid my twenty quid and given up my afternoon, I would be a lot less happy. I'm looking at it purely from the perspective of the season.

Salford? Yes, not a better time to play them, but we had key players fresh off a plane, and if our second half was a reflection of how we will be, then it could come good. Bradford was the game that was the sickener, particularly because it was such a four-pointer. I'm just not ready to hit the panic button yet. If we can restart our season at the weekend and beat Catalan and then London, and beat either Hull KR or Cas, then the season starts to look a little brighter. If so, by June Bradford will look like just a bad day at the office, and the Wigan score will be one of those expected ones.

Win just two out of the next six, then I agree we are in real trouble, as the Bulls could well have overtaken us by then. If we can't stay above them with a six-point start, I agree we're out and deserve to be.

Performances aside, I just can't help feeling that we've only dropped two points from our expected haul so far. I'm not optimistic about the season, but I'm not one for the panic button.

Not quite sure where the "There for the taking" comes from when you look at their line up, Charnley wasn't rested he was dropped for poor form and as Bren says, Hampshire offers more of a threat than Bowen right now. The rest are all first team and SL regulars

Hampshire,
Burgess,
Gelling,
Thornley,
Manfredi,
Green,
Smith,
Flower,
McIlorum,
Taylor,
L Farrell,
Bateman,
O'Loughlin.

Tomkins,
Crosby,
Burke,
Clubb.

Well guy,s i did not see the game so can not coment, so from a distance i,d say we put 24 points past the best superleague team on their own turf so if we can sort our defence out which we have bolsterd by adding nick scruton, well who knows we may be suprised.

I don't want it to sound like I'm taking too much away but one try was a one on one steal and two were from interceptions.

Point being your attacking will need to improve heavily for the rest of the season rather than rely on luck.

However Sammut and Tuatai looked very good.

Are you serious that charnley was dropped ,I know he couldn't catch Jennings twice but he scored two trys in his last performance the world club championship is that bad form, if we dropped players out of form we wouldn't have a team

Never said they were there for the taking, I said most beatable in terms of line up - didn't expect a win but did expect a lot better performance. I mean what will Wigan do to us at full strength 60 -20?

I didn't see anything to say he was dropped. Manfredi has been pushing for game time recently anyway.
I assumed Charnley was rested rather than dropped.

Thanks Phil Clarke; I think you'll find that you make your own luck - the interception didn't just land in his hands and both tries still needed scoring.

Jesus - give us a bit of hope!

And if it was the other way round,it would have been the best thing since sliced bread.....respect the ball at all times you should know that...shouldn't you

As one of those you are possibly referring to, I will support the players when I see effort worthy of that support and did support those players who put the effort in. However, these are pro RL players and some of the errors and lack of effort served up was embarrassing. I don't subscribe to blindly supporting people that was the problem with glover and Elston anyone who questioned what they were doing off the field was shot down and look how that turned out.

You will see on another thread that I did actually suggest criticising players in this key season maybe counter productive, but I can't help saying it how I see it and mathers yesterday seemed to be trying to avoid making tackles which should be simply not acceptable to anyone connected with the club.