Just watched the re run of the game and it reinforced my view what a dirty side Wigan are, and a poor ref allowed them to get away with it. How many times did they slow the play the ball down to allowed the third man to be back in the line, on numerous tackles the man going for the legs was close to being a cannon ball tackle. Numerous head high shots in a row and the man in the middle did nothing. It was clear on the night Leeds were the better side and the only way Wigan could win was to take Leeds down to their legs by breaking up the play, but ref should not allow this to happen

I would imagine that Wigan will respond in a similar way akin to last season's magic weekend for the rematch.So Brian Mc order your 17 crash helmets now for the Newcastle weekend.

Given the penalty count, bit weird to insinuate that the referee did nothing...

Whether he could have done more is open to debate.

Tbh given their form and missing players I imagine Wane will have wanted something similar on Friday.....and they did end up in the 2nd half trying to be more like their usual "dirty" self......however even then it seemed half hearted and lacking the intensity seen previously with Wane coached teams. Even watching a replay of the game, just before kickoff when they show you them warming up they looked uninterested and not pumped up for the occasion at all......usually they're fired up and look like they've been fed raw meat all week and can't what to get stuck in.

One thing you could guarantee with Wane's Wigan is that it would always play fired up. But they didn't and it doesn't look like this was the only week they've had this issue this season. After a while a coach can start to stall at a club as he just can't get the same reaction and response from his players and it all starts to go stale......think that could be happening with Wane at Wigan. Still early days but I'm wondering if from their perspective that perhaps it should be Wane's final year in charge there and they should look for a fresh approach a new coach could bring.

Michael Mc was their captain. Leading by his example I presume.

You can get by on shouting, passion and the ability of your players for so long. Eventually, you start to need some actual coaching ability.

I'm not convinced Wane has it. IMO he was there to be Madge's "bad cop" and enforcer around the dressing room, and doesn't look cut out to progress the club which is going through a bit of transition at the minute.

From the games I've seen of him this season, he seems to have calmed down a bit. Even when a bit of handbags flared up when they played Widnes, he didn't go steaming in looking to knock anyone's head off.

Maybe he's finally learned his lesson?

Maybe they no longer believe in the Wane way. Yeah, they've dished out some pain over the last couple of years but you're not telling me that they haven't had any inflicted on them. Perhaps the tough option no longer appeals when it's in a losing cause.

i think Danny Mags' 2 black eyes tell you all you need to know about wigans tactics

Leeds played rugby against Wigan and won. nuff said.

Wane is a bully. I think some of his own players are sick of his approach.

Thats why they aren't playing for him anymore.

There was a thread recently, I think from Charnley, saying that their training regime has been taken to new levels of brutality under Wane & they smash each other to pieces. Wane is very scientific in his approach & preparation.

This. The constant levels of aggression Wane managed to get into his team will only work for a limited time. Its very very much dependent on the players have a huge amount of faith in and loyalty to Wane. If that faith and loyalty starts to wane (

) then so does the entire on-field strategy.

Has Wane been coaching Steven Gerrard?

Well this thread seems to be pie free maybe it's because they lost and aren't doing well that's keeping them away

They walk a thin line between niggly and cowardly, the latter not acceptable the prior being a decent trait.

Similar thing happened to us under Bluey.A one dimensional approach can have a great effect for a period if everyone buys into it but if not things can fall apart at the seams rather quickly as maybe happening at Wigan.

Still early days in the season and things can turn around quickly but it does appear that things are begining to unravel for Wane and Wigan.

If you are going out to intimidate and rough up the opposition then you have to be totally commited to it. When they did a job on us last year they were all in all the time. Every opportunity they came in numbers and isolated certain Leeds players, JP, Ablett and a couple of others got the treatment. They also p!$$ed about in numbers at every PTB. All that made it very difficult for a referee to control everything and Leeds players were made to look like they were also part of the problem.
Friday was just them playing at it. Without Flanders to lead the way with the cheap shots on grounded players they were half @r$ed and it was easy for the ref to penalise them. They did enough to get pinged but not enough to make Leeds players react. The likes of Batemen and Tomkins were just too obvious.

I'm always fascinated by the world that Wane lives in. It's clear he doesn't live in ours, every game they lose they have apparantly "dominated" enough to win. I strongly suspect that he has zero respect for anyone outside Wigan, but I don't know the guy so that might be a false assumption based on everything he says and does in public. My bad.

Flanders that's a great one

Nah just too busy laughing to bring myself to post.

Suggesting Lockers attacks players on the ground is a new one though.

Being the most aggressive team in the league won us the double. It was obviously going to get found out soon enough. We're just working on a plan B.

That's the thing though. Wigan haven't been found out, their style could still bring them success but the players don't seem to have the fire in their bellies that Wane would put into them that will make that style work ATM.

You wonder whether some of it is a Ben Flower hangover.

Wigan got a lot of press for all the wrong reasons after the Grand Final. You wonder whether the players are mentally walking a bit of a tightrope between going out and getting into people, and trying to rein it in a bit.

Every chance he gets he'll put a forearm into a grounded players face. He's a hard, tough and uncompromising player who makes sure you know it when he tackles you. In his early days he made many dentists very wealthy.

I have no real problem with the aggresive tactics Wigan use, I started watching the game in the early eighties where physically intimidating the opposition was as fundamental as passing and running. The problem is that referees are ill equiped these days to deal with it. They don't sort it out themselves and they don't allow other teams to sort it out properly. There are some players in your team who if playing in another era would simply have been knocked out on the pitch with little or no consequence. Widnes played the intimidation card to it's ultimate and other teams dealt with it. I saw Roy Dickinson lay out Les Gorley, who was stretchered off the pitch, and all the ref did was wave a finger at Roy. There was nobody more worthy of being knocked out than Les Gorley and the ref knew that. The sight of Paul Cullen being chased around Wilderspool by an enraged Eric Grothe still makes me smile.
Refs are trying to keep a game going, they know Wigan are using these tactics but can't penalise everything and RL is still a physical game, but it's only one half of the coin. If you allow these tactics to go unpunished then you should allow the appropriate response to go unpunished also. But that doesn't happen.

Who suggested that about Lockers? Now Flanders was caught bang to rights wasn't he?