Can't believe Brown came out with that. KC and Rush must have cringed!

God somebody Wigan must have seriously tormented you as a child. wonder why you got banned the first time.

I know we can't always expect interesting debate on these boards as there are as many idiots as there are good posters but do yourself a favour mate and grow up. You're making yourself look a complete retard with these posts. It might be funny once but you're beginning to sound like a kid and his favourite 'knock knock' joke!

I reckon he probably got fingered by Kelvin Skerrett.

I'll add this, which hopefully doesn't hold too much bias and isn't too twisted by the disappointment of a derby victory.

Wigan were eating up the yards in the middle of the park. The ability to paly your part in a quicker, more organised defensive line to stop this is not classed as an individual skill, nor is it really something that is discussed when comparing players abilities, but it plays a massive part in the out come of the game. We have struggled to restrict other top teams, even in the victory against Leeds.
We've also struggled to dictate the speed of the oppositions PTB, which given the impressive way our starting front row has generally performed going forward, can't be down to a lack of physicality.
Add to that our defending out wide is very inconsistent.
That's 3 team factors that play a massive part in victory/defeat that are not really discussed when comparing individual players. 3 factors that you have us licked on.

Your mention of LMS may be a key to one of our problems. He can be absolutely awesome - for instance, the second half of last season he was immense, but at the moment he looks like a right southern pansy. Similarly, Jordan Turner has shown some absolutely great ability in the opening games, but is way off the mark currently. Could we be guilty of disregarding consistency when evaluating the ability of our players?
We have been very excited about our young, talented backline, but a major factor in our initial glee was the contribution of Percival, who's been missing for a while now.

Another thing Wigan have is better balance. They have a standoff, which we're still sorely lacking. Bar his wonder game against Leeds, Hohaia is a poor choice at 6 and stifle our ball going wide. Something that does not happen to other good teams.
They also have, as Saddo pointed out, Sean O'Loughlin. A wonderfully talented player in his own right, he also brings leadership, physicality which resonates through the team. John Wilkin essentially looks like the schoolboy version of him. The closest thing we seem to have is Amor, who's carries in heavy traffic are a real lift. We have Walmsley too, who's been incredible at times (if you forget those silly errors), but all in all we need to compliment impact forwards like Walmsley and Masoe with grafters and ours, Sia and Amor aside, are either too light (Boof), still a bit young (Richards, Thompson) or too work shy (LMS).

We have some real strengths, but the gaps we have seem to really/really drag the rest right down when things aren't going right. This derby defeat is a real disappointment for the Saints fans, hopefully come the end of the year we will have learnt from games like this, filled in our gaps by developing the youngsters and ironed out the creases in our team characteristics.

Very well summarised.

I will add, that I think we've been very naive since the mid 2000's with regard wrestling being introduced to the game. Part of me still thinks as a team we want to play quick free flowing rugby (which is absolutely great and fine by me) so jump out of tackles, assuming the opposition with show us respect and do the same - this simply doesn't happen and we always struggle with a slower game, which Wigan are very good at ensuring. (That's no criticism of Wigan, it's a crucial part of the game now, and we struggle with it massively) - we have the physicality to win collisions and be dominant in tackles, but we don't use that as an advantage