The problem Nobby has is that he can't get a new secretary but has to hope the one day the message gets through! On the face of Saturday's performance you could argue that it has but, as you say, It's all about how we kick on from here.

Re the current team selection if feel he has stumbled upon it to some extent but so what? The biggest factor for me was Piggy actually playing to something like the standard I expected of him. If anyone thought he had gone OK previously they must have needed the tissues on Saturday!

Exactly so the point is he has to look at himself and work on getting the message over, he can do this.

This has been my major issue with Noble his seemingly lack of ability to evolve, i think at half time vs Quins he had no choice or he would have been out on his ear, which may explain the change in ethos from that point on.

As i said i find it odd the players are a waist of space in some peoples eyes with poor skills etc etc when we are losing but Noble suddenly becomes a coaching guru and takes all the credit when we put in 1 good performance.

If the pigster continues to play like that, he'll have settled in much more quickly than most other overseas players do.

The immediate writing-off of Mark Riddell was ridiculous. I myself was guilty of this, but others - on this board and others - were positively euphoric about his poor form, hinting, yet again, at hidden agendas.

The reason i ask are you numb is because you have totally missed the point of the original post despite being told time and time again that the original post was aimed at Jonh/DaveO and all the bandwagon jumpers who keep churning out the same old tripe that Noble cannot coach anything but 5 drives and a kick. Is that really so hard to understand?



Where have i ever stated that you think Fridays performance had nothing to do with Noble? If you think it did then i take it you agree then that Noble can coach more than just 5 drives and a kick?



I choose to ignore nothing. I agree we have to back Fridays performance up and be more consistant but then again i fail to see where i have ever stated we dont so i dont see what your argument is. The only thing i have done is pointed out that Fridays performance shows Noble can coach the kind of performance that Jonh and others said he couldnt.



You didnt blast Lindsay for sacking coaches? I take it you think it was a good idea to keep sacking them then?



When did i ever say it didnt matter who signed the players? I may of said i dont know who signed them but i never stated it did not matter. Just for the record though, i do not know who signed the players,there are rumours Noble wanted x player and Lenegan got him y player but they are just rumours. Again i fail to see what your point is by bringing this up anyway.



Then why do you feel the need to post in this thread? I take it you agree Noble can coach more than just 5 drives and a kick?

Who exactly forced Noble to drop Smith,please tell us? The same person who forced him to drop Coley,Mathers (after his ban) and Goulding? Was it the force of dark energy from a far away galaxy that forced him to drop these players?

And just to set the record straight we argued more that he was not forced to play the kids. He could quite easily of moved O'Loughlin to stand off to replace Smith if as the majority say he will not play young British players.

There is simply no argument,Noble has given the kids a chance when the oppurtunity has presented itself and they have taken it and he has rewarded them by keeping them in the first team. End of chat.

Can I hold you to that?

For the time being

Maybe this was some sort of hangover from Micky higham being allowed to leave when many felt he was a very good player for us.

I for one hadn't seen that much of piggy before he came so chose to reserve judgement.

I think we all want Wigan to turn into a side that is mainly made up of wigan youth, which has a few antipodeans to add that extra class, a team that is based on form. enjoyable open rugby(as we all want to be entertained), stop giving penalties away consistently and dropping the ball. All these factors will appease the many fans..and ultimately give us a chance a winning more matches.

Related to what?!

As you say friday proved that wigan can play more than 5 drives and a kick..I agree..but it's only one game..we need to do it a lot more often...time will tell..to be fair to others..how many games have wigan under noble played like this? (I suggest not many) if noble is as good as you think I assume we can expect more of the same.

This is what I struggle with.

Apart from the Wakefield game in which we were appalling, we have scored some really good tries against the other sides. We could and should have beat Hull.

There were no barge over tries against Cas or Quinns, and some of the build up play on Saturday was superb.

There are times when you have to play five drives and a kick, and on Saturday IMO we pushed the ball a little too much on a couple of occasions, but got away with it (maybe the ground being a little dryer helped)

I agree i personally thought at times we pushed the pass a little too much, but it was one of those days when all the passes stuck, helped by a poor Bradford display.

We saw some cracking tries last year as well usually when the game was gone or when we had to throw the standard negative game plan out of the window. Getting the balance right is crucial, if you are not chasing the game you have to win the field position and posession and lay the platform, not sure we did this at times on Saturday but it was great to watch and one of "those days" where everything went right and the passes went to hand.

I wonder how much having Riddell shine & a natural 6 in the team helped the flow in terms of the quality of the attack.

Both those influences will undoubtably helped Nobby approach the game as we seemingly did.

but it was good watching it for a change

I certainly wouldn't want Wigan to lose to prove a point, far from it. If you'd seen me on Saturday I was loudly supporting the team and was as pleased as anybody that we won. I make no apologies for the fact that defeats like the Wakey one this year and Hudds last year leave me absolutely gutted. No true Wigan fan can watch performances like that and not be upset.

I do agree that to some extent BN has become a bit of a focal point for irritation over the failure of our youth policy in recent years, its certainly not fair to suggest that he is solely or even mainly to blame. I still remain mystified by his selections this season though (Mathers? Phelps?). I only saw the Leigh match pre-season but both of those two looked awful and Smith didn't look great either (and was truly shocking against Wakey).

I've said on other threads that BN is only part of the problem. Our failings to my mind lie more in a general malaise in terms of standards than any one individual and I'm not sure that the best coach in the world could properly turn things round at Wigan on his own.

We need to raise standards across the board. That includes much better recruitment and the fitness side in particular, which aren't the direct responsibility of BN. I've used the example of Riddell and Smith before - good players in theory (and Riddell is now starting to deliver) - but they don't look to have the required level of fitness. That simply would not have been allowed in the old days, e.g. Inga arrived with a massively bigger reputation than either of those players but was made to conform to the Wigan way. He was forced to lose weight and improve his fitness.

We just don't seem to do that any more, second (or even third) best seems to be OK.

To be fair to BN he can't sort that kind of thing out on his own, it needs IL and the board to set the agenda just as ML and the directors in the mid 80s had a vision of Wigan becoming great again and set out to make us the best in everything we did.

Isn't there a middle ground to be had here? I am not a fan of "Noble rugby" i.e. 5 drives and a kick every time to go up the middle. But reviewing the games over the past few weeks and earlier on last season - our problem was that we could barely grasp the "5 drives and a kick" way of laying a platform - nevermind going on from that to then play expansive rugby and putting moves on near the line.

What none of us can say for sure is that Noble was forcing them to just stick with the 5 drives and a kick. And no one can say that he wasn't.

The end result, however, was a game like last night where correct platforms were set allowing for flowing and fast attacking rugby. Sam starting had a huge influence in our ability to create problems ball in hand - but who is to say he could have done that if the forwards such as Hock, Feka, Fielden (and Colely!) hadn't done their share Noble-style?

Were the first few performances the players fault for not managing to set decent platforms and look after the ball? No one can deny that the stats for the first three games were horrendous. Were the players just following Noble instructions and that's where it has all gone wrong?

I know this is a post of no real answer or view - but since this thread has become so polarised perhaps those championing Noble should hang back a bit, applaud the entire team and coach for the peformance and hope we build on it next week. The first few weeks were horrendous and cannot be forgotten so quickly and easily. Perhaps also the Noble bashers give some credit where it is perhaps due (I believe jonh has done so) but be allowed to remain cautious in how much of it is Noble's doing.

It helped massively IMO, the players seem to be running off Riddell/LuLu and Tomkins, something which they seemed incapable of doing in the Higham era.

Am I the only one who can't believe this argument regarding Noble is still raging on? The same old points are repeated over and over again!

Get off the fence

Thats just far to sensible a post .

Which all boils down to Higham's inability to distribute the ball in any way effectively.

Which therefore puts an end to the Higham lovers argument.

While I don't jump on the bandwagon and call for Noble and all the players to be sacked every time we put in a bad performance on the flip side I don't think we should over-react to a good performance. I think Saturday is as good as it gets. Everything stuck and we were helped out by Bradford's poor discipline giving us decent field position.

Also when we put in a bad performance I lay the majority of the blame with the players therefore when we win I think the majority of the credit needs to go to the players. I thought Sam Tomkins was bossing the game brilliantly and didn't look out of place whatsoever. There's always that worry of burnout but while he's firing he has to be in the starting 13. Gaz Hock was brilliant just as he can be brilliantly bad in defeats with his offloads that don't always come off. All 17 were on top of their games.

Coming back to the general discussion re Noble, at the risk of repeating myself, I don't think there is a better coach out there (that is available). I do disagree with his selections at times but unless you are the coach yourself it is highly unlikely you will agree with everything the coach decides upon.

This myth of 5 drives and a kick that has been peddled so many times by some that the bandwagoners start believing it rather than actually watching the game and forming their own opinions, is exactly that, a myth.

This season, even in the poorer performances we have shown some promising signs in attack. The main problem in the poor performances was the defence out wide which has been somewhat rectified by Bailey being put to centre and Smith taken out the side.

I believe there are still question marks over Noble and whether he can take us to the next level but what worries me is if he can't (with his record) who can? I think Leeds are still the benchmark and I think we are emulating the way they have gone about becoming the benchmark by investing in the youth set-up in the hope that some gooduns come through which in Tomkins and Ainscough it certainly looks like they are.

Can I just ask if (and probably when) we lose to Leeds on Friday can this thread not be rectified. Some of the fans opinions are more Jekyll and Hyde than the players performances

Good shout Woody

The major failing this year rests on Lenagans shoulders in not signing an experienced prop

Up until last Saturday we seemed incapable of doing it in the Riddell era too. Please explain how our poor performances up to the Bulls game were the fault of a player now employed at a different club.

Distribution was poor. I'm not against Higham, I think he's a decent player but IMO something seems to have changed in the side since Riddell found his feet in SL. Maybe it was Noble's tactics change, where if so, have nothing to do with Higham, I don't know. But whatever it is, the team are scoring tries for fun with the constant support play and the run's off the half-backs and hooker.