George is a late withdrawal again. Anyone know what's happened? Hopefully not a repeat of last time and it won't be 8 week 'til we see him again. Shorrocks in his place at stand-off, never seen him play before but good luck to the lad!

17 to play Widnes:

FB - Tierney
W - Charnley
C - Gelling
C - Gildart
W - Manfredi
S/O - Shorrocks
S/H - Smith
P - Crosby
H - Powell
P - Flower
SR - Isa
SR - Sutton
LF - Mossop

Bench:

Tautai
Burke
Gregson
Bretherton

Going to be a tough one tonight with that.

I think we will struggle, we are down a couple of extra players than last week where we were pretty average. the weather is a leveller of course and Widnes have found a way to win again.
It's a ground we traditionally struggle at against a Widnes team chock packed of ex-Wiganers looking to do the double on us.

It's gonna be tough.

Shorrocks!

What has happened to Gregson?

Never mind noticed Gregson on the bench :lol surprised he hasn't started seeing as Shorrocks has played about 30 mins this year...

Looks like Crosby's gonna get a ban then

Our kick defence is shocking at times.

I love Ben Flower. Unbelievable tackle.

Someone get Vardy on.

What a feckin brutal half of rugby that was. Awful.

First ever 0-0?

Someone has to score soon surely?

This is poor, unbelievably poor. Wayne Bennet may well resign after watching this, or be recruiting as many NRL players with English heritage as possible.

Charnley for England (RU)

Class effort chasing back again. We need to get this guy another winners ring before he goes.

Should have taken the easy penalty rather than tap.

Great win if not a great spectacle. Fantastic to see a big NIL on the scoreboard, yes they bombed two tries over the line. But at the end of the day it's two points away from home with a young team.

The quality will be criticised again and understandably so but the spirit shown in Wigan's defence deserves a lot of praise.

We won't hear much about that, it will be all about how unlucky Widnes were ... with very little mention of the fact that to win rugby matches you need to keep hold of the ball.

Balls to them. Who wouldn't rather win 7-0 than lose 31-30?

I think we deserve a lot of credit, at the same time, to be fair Widnes blew it. From our point of view missing Tomkins, Williams, MM and SOL is going to significantly affect the attack, add to that Sarg, Bateman, Tomkins and Farrell, then loosing Gelling and agrees on during the game they did very well to win. The difference was a never give up attitude, I know Widnes made mistakes, then Ah Van one was a shocker, the Hanbury and Dean ones would have been tries if it wasn't for the effort of Flower and Charnley.

If we can get a healthy team by September we stand a chance.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it, whether we'll ever get anywhere close to a healthy team this year. It's one crop of injuries after another. But to keep knocking out wins under those circumstances is fairly impressive.

Not convinced we will tbh- seems like one of those years!

Hopefully things will come together in 6 weeks or so - Faz, Lockers, Bateman and Clubb are all due back then. The injuries in the backline are all short term thankfully.

Problem is the Challenge Cup is next week!

This game more than any other why we need further coaching input.

It was a woeful spectacle but you cannot deny the spirit and defence.

We need an attacking input without any shadow of a doubt.

We may win something, but it isn't going to be pretty and entertaining to watch, just graft and structure.

Cas fan here and I thought your defence ( with the team you had out ) was amazing. Thoroughly deserved the win.
Just hope I aren't saying the same next week.