Sure Warrington knocked Wigan out of the challenge cup in 2010, or have you just excluded that stat??

Rod Studd is getting on my wick, doesn't give anyone else a chance to speak and even Stevo can't get a word in sideways with him

No. youve just made up that fact!
Leeds beat wigan in 2010 which the poster has mentioned

You mean like the Challenge Cup Final last year? oh..... hang on.

No. Got it. You must mean the Play-off Semi-Final the year before........... Damn. Not that one either.

Sorry. You're going to have to remind me of just precisely WHICH "big games" you're talking about.

That is just a load of old tosh. There is only really Warrrington at home we seem to suffer against, Other than that big games are a mixed bag. On our way to lifting the Challenge cup last year we beat St. Helens away, Warrington away and Leeds in the final. Now last season we had a few funny results, Catalans home and away, Just scraping past Hull at home and drawing with Castleford. We have smashed apart those 3 teams this season and that is not to mention, Leeds, St. Helens and Huddersfield. Sure it's disappointing when we get beat but Leeds had a good game plan and harassed us into submission and well done to them. Every team has an off day, Just a pity ours was in a cup match. We have to concentrate on getting Matty Smith integrated into the team and getting Fielden back in the pack somewhere. I am expecting to end the season with a flourish, Once Tommy is back we have him, Finch and Smith all swapping and interchanging, The opposition will be dizzy/ Then we can look forward to next season. Plenty of choice up front with all the young lads playing an important part at some point this season gaining valuable experience. We have all the lads out on loan getting the experience and of course we (hopefully) can look forward to the announcement of a stellar signing to replace Finch. With any luck Gelling will be moved on and Russell will take his place.

I've seen three episodes and they've all been sh*te.

think we are not mentally ready to be considered a great side yet, but to say we are not mentally tough is wrong.

remember it took leeds a long time of getting close and bombing it to help give them this big game experience that they do enjoy at the minute. we are only 2 seasons in to what we hope will be a successful period in this clubs history. wait till the likes of sam/charnley/goulding/mcilorum/hock/HH have all played in 4/5 finals and we will see a big difference in how we manage these games.

Anybody who considers Stevo's opinions of any importance isn't 'mentally tough', just mental !!!!

We do have a bit of an issue with big games at the DW. Our record against Wire is woeful and against Saints at home there is some room for improvement, but we've also contrived to lose games when there have been big crowds on at the DW to teams we shouldn't have lost to, the likes of Harlequins in 2010 (18.6k on for the Big One fixture I think) and more recently in front of a big crowd at Bradford

I'm partially in agreement with Stevo and BK. I'd say there is a weakness there that SW and the team need to address.

Your absolutely correct... it was the year before... easy mistake!

Don’t take him on, he’s just trying to throw a Spaniard in the works, and as he likes to say, about every five minutes or so, “it’s as simple as that”

I like Rod Studd he wants to run a fast paced show and cover as many topics as he can. The journos don't have a problem with Rod or his pace of speech but Mike Stevenson does.
Stevo simply can't keep up with him at his pace. Hence how many times was Stevo prompted for an answer, spouted nonsense, then Rod had to say repeatedly "I know that". Stevo looked so slow it was unreal.
They need to replace Stevo with another journo

To me it seems like Rod Studd deliberately interrupts Stevo no matter what and tries to get him animated. At times he interrupts before Stevo is even allowed to answer the question and it just seems like that's what they think the viewers want. It just doesn't seem natural some of the journalists have given long winded answers or gone off on a tangent without Rod Studd berating them.

It absolutely spoils the show for me. Even if Stevo is a bit slow to get his points across it takes much longer with the constant interruptions than it would if he was just allowed to speak.

I also think those little hints when they are plugging the show during commentary about big arguments and bickering between Rod Studd and Stevo give away that it's deliberate and that's what they think people want to see.

Stevo is the problem. In the last prog they were trying to discuss when VR should be used, Stevo kept banging on about who should be VR. Far to loquacious, and slow to get to any sort of point.

At first Stevo was very good on the show. He even made some sensible points and didn't waffle on or go over the top and was generally allowed to say what he wanted to say.
That's why I think it's RS or possibly the shows producers who have orchestrated all the nonsense that there is now. It could be the both of them, but week after week RS has been getting more and more ridiculous and making his voice heard more often and I don't think it works anywhere near as well as it did in the first few weeks.

I can't disagree.... The point about the VR's being ex refs may be a good point, but Stevo does like the sound of his own voice though.

To get back to the subject, stevo has a point.. albeit tenuous - but Wigan weren't up for it on Saturday, and yes they have been up for it on other days. Its up to Waney to find out what went wrong so it doesnt happen again. Contrustive critism can be very useful its just hard coming from stevo.

Well done Stevo, that will ensure that Wane makes them mentally tough for now to the 7th October

Did anyone else notice the carefully guarded way Andy Wilson said he expects us to be at the grand final whilst inferring that he thought our prospective opponents would be more likely to be the winners

In the main i'd actually agree with Stevo to a degree on this one....He normally talks crap but here I cant really argue too much.

In major semi finals we simply aren't good enough and our record speaks for itself. We've only ever won semi finals at points in time when we've been so vastly better than the rest of the league and blown the opposition away.....and only twice in the last 5 years.

On occasions when we haven't been vastly better, even if the opposition is weaker than us, as long as they can keep it tight for the first 20 and make it an armwrestle, we mostly seem to lose! Our ability to win the 50:50 big games/ or even games where we actually boss 60:40 is far far less than say Leeds for example, who can turn up on major occasions, with no form, and even play at times worse than the opposition but still win.

If we end up playing Leeds in the semi final of the play offs, I would have them as being favourates even though we are clearly a miles better side, simply because they can win the armwrestle, when we seem to implode, make simple errors and beat ourselves like last week!

Good point, but I still think theres something in what Stevo is saying.

In the knock out games that have counted in the last 2 years, we've got a 2 wins in 3 record, which in itself is pretty good. However, when you look at it from the POV that in that period we've clearly been the dominant side in the league in some way, you could argue our record should be much better than that!

In the periods when Leeds / Saints / Bradford / and we were the dominant team going back to the early ninties, I would expect that any team who were clearly dominant in the league would have a better knock out record than 2 out of 3.

The fact is, in big games, despite the record referred to, we haven't been as mentally dominant as we have technically dominant, and those games we have lost we should have really won, but haven't as we've been in a dogfight, and not kept mentally composed to put those sides away. A team with our dominance on the field in the last two years should really be winning 8 or 9 out of 10 in respect of massive games, rather than 6 from 9, which will become 6 in 10, and so only 60%, if we play Leeds in the semi final of the play offs IMO!

I think people on here are making a mountain out of a mole hill here, not so much as the bald one (did he get out of France alive?) but people bringing up all sorts of facts. Lets look at the bigger picture theres Wigan, Leeds, Warrington Sts all expected to be up there with trophies and you can also add in there Hull, Cats and maybe Huddersfield as decent outside bets. Just take the top four there are only 3 trophies up for grabs evey year and if all four get into a semi final then two will obviously lose. Doing this off memory but the only team out of that four who haven't won in the last 2/3 years is Sts. But they always get to the GF.

A side note we lost Tommy through injury. Look at Leeds last year they only got Mcguire back around June and they only started to improve then. Wire Briers didn't play against Salford and got walloped by them, what would happen if he was out for longer? Are all these coincidences or genuine I don't know but there is a definite pattern if a regular in the halves is out for a period of time the team generally struggles.

Oh come one. 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

Now don't be sad...

I smile when people say Leeds are mentally tough and always win the big games. They are 80 mins away from losing 3 Wembley finals in a row. In the past 2 years Leeds have won 1 final out of their last 3 finals. Wire have won 2 out of 2 finals and won both of them with something to spare. As have Wigan, yet Leeds are mentally so much better??