Joel is done for the season but Sam is doubtful for this game. Been spotted wearing a protective boot at the weekend apparently and the CC semi is 2 weeks away so they won't want to risk him.

How long was SoL banned for? the two games after EGP?.

I worry that George Williams is coming back into form. We've had problems with him in the past.
Plus Nuuuuuuuuasala (?) is an unknown quantity.

Sutty
Briscoe
Watkins
Moon
Hall
Liley
Burrow
Galloway
Segeyaro
Garbutt
Ablett
Achurch
Singo

Cuthbo...the german....deaney.....jjb

Just in my humble opinion...but will except any team mac seems fit to put out ....after all he is the coach......

How come EVERY time we play Wigan they have a massive injury crisis that week, players will have to play with legs hanging off, Shaun Wane moans that he cant find 17 fit players????

What I am struggling with is how come a team with so many injuries throughout the season can be top of the table?

Better quality and availability of reserve players perhaps?

Plus Matty Smith whom so many on here deride but who guides them round the park has not missed any or very few games.
Also Sam Powell has been a revelation, a young player, doing 80 minutes at hooker standing in for McCllorum, Wigan's James Roby/Danny Houghton.

Because of the way they play. They have alot of solid youngsters that can slot into the pattern and it's buisness as usual. It doesn't always win you the final itself, but you''ll consistently get there.

Yep. Wigan have effective systems, and the players play to them.

They operate with decent outside backs, bit of flair in the halves from Williams and a pack that tries to run over the top of you down the middle. It's not pretty, but it's effective and if they get it right very difficult to play against.

Spot on. We have a different way which relies more heavily on having your first choice available.

Interestingly only us and Wakey have scored fewer tries this year than Wigan yet they're top, because they are hard to score against. Think they've only conceded more than 20 points in 4 games this year...,,if you're conceding less than 20 points in a match you're going to win most of the time in SL.

Because it's true.

Gelling, Tomkins, Farrell, McIlorum, Clubb, all genuine first team players, plus Bateman and O'Loughlin out for other reasons, is over half our 1 to 13. We've had to debut, I think, 8 lads this year.

Our attack this year has not been able to score many, however as has already been said, our defence has been good enough to get small margin wins.
We don't know how we are in our current league position, having a disjointed season like this.

FWIW, I've got you down to win this week

We have us down to win as well because we are better than you .

Trip to specsavers for you I think mate

They play a very structured system that makes it easy to drop players into, the only players who need to play with any vision is the halves

We rely (probably too much) on the individual skills of our outside backs, notice that last week we didn't score off set moves but on Hall's ability in the air and Watkin's ability to change direction late at the line

They also have a reserve team which probably helps more than you would think when bringing players into the team

Opera man is performing so it's a nail on 2 points for us.

We've had a lot of very narrow wins this year and could just as easily be 6th or 7th. Although we've really struggled with injuries (and still are) the team in a number of games have somehow found a way to win.

I think having a reserve team helps a little and with hopefully more games for the reserves next year it will help more with the development of youngsters.

The other factor which several have mentioned is we are a structured side and the first team, reserves and youngsters all play to the same structure which makes it easier to step up. We are as much reliant on the structure as the better players consequently don't miss them as much as some other teams would when they are injured.

The Black and Whites will be cheering you on tonight. Good luck!!

I don't know if the stats back it up but his goal kicking seems to have improved. A number of times this year he seems to land ones at crucial points in games (to stretch the lead from 6 to 8 points and a two score game for example) and he's landed several DG's.

Also think at the start of the year when they were missing players and Tomkins had yet to return that Bateman was massive for Wigan. Without him they would've lost 2/3 more games in the first half of the year imo.

He was. And then 'that' incident happened and we put him on a disciplinary. We could have suspended him for any number of weeks: 2, 4, whatever, but shot ourselves in our own feet. How many clubs would do that to arguably their best player?

I think most clubs would have sacked him , or transfer listed him at least

I guess it depends on the severity of the incident.
But yes I doubt many clubs Leeds included would have banned him for that amount of games.
Also how will the rest of the team respond to him when he is back remains to be seen.

Or stood by them after serving a custodial sentence!

Entirely different circumstances though. I think Bateman is very lucky indeed to still be at Wigan.

Though of course the real problem is that if a club sacks a player then they're the ones that lose out.
As a sport we need to come up with some kind of system so that when a player is sacked the club receives some form of compensation if they go to another club.

A club can, I think, deregister the player for salary cap purposes so he can't play but continue to hold the rights over his playing registration for as long as his contract is still valid.

Problem with that is you're still lumbered with paying their salary until the contract runs out, even though it doesn't appear on your cap.