Not bad for a team with one move a 400+ points difference is it.

I hate some of our fans

having watched the match back, i dont think our attacking options were limited to the point where we need to worry. leeds did pile the pressure on with their defence but we still had plenty of opportunities, like gouldings ball to charnely going to ground when charnley was in the clear, oloughlins offload straight to moon on the try line, sam powells disallowed try and mcilorum losing it (i thought hardaker reefed it out, but then mcilorum was charging in ball first so can understand the decision) over the line. a couple of times we missed opportunities that, were blake green on the field instead of sam powell, we would not have missed. but as others have said, powell was probably the best half on the pitch for the majority of the game. but if that still doesnt work, it seems that spreading the ball earlier and with a deeper line of attack should still work as leeds can only rush so fast as long as we ship the ball nice and quickly. barring that, we need the forwards to ship the ball on from first receiver a la farrell for tomkins' try on sunday. plenty of options, just hope wane has the same idea.

People will always have different opinions. It's to be expected on a forum such as this so you need to get used to it. How can you hate someone you've never met?

Oh get a grip its a figure of speech.

We are top of the league with a points difference that is 300 points better than anyone else and some of our doom mongers are debating our attack! Leeds defended well, its as simple as that. Everyone has played everyone at least once, we are 300+ points better than anyone else, to me, that tells me we are the best attacking team in the league.

We've also conceded the fewest points.

Good post, thank you for posting this as after recent abuse I was unwilling to post the same thing.

Leeds completely shut off our '1 move', rushed on the flanks and that was it, we were forced to play down the middle. I totally agree, there didn't seemed to be anything else going on in attack.

Leeds forced this, made it into an arm wrestle, and before a pen was awarding giving us field possession and positioning we were losing the battle (this can be seen from where we were kicking from on the last tackle compared to Leeds.

Also it had to be noted how we scored our points, often (not always but often) on the back of a Leeds mistake, not even a forced errors (Bailey's push on Logan, Sinfield's silly kick attempt).

I've said it many times before, our structured attack when executed with speed will kill 95% of teams in the SL, BUT when tried against a top team it will become predictable as it did on Sunday.

With a returning Peacock and Abblet, I don't see us beating Leeds when it matters.

We put 50 points on pretty much the same team using a structured attack last season.

And Sam didnt feature in the (GF) play off semi final, Matty Smith was strugglin for fitness on Sunday, the trouble is our forwards were expected to dominate on Sunday and they didn't- thats full credit to Leeds. A bit of fine tuning and Wigan will have a better chance of making both finals. The loss of the half backs earlier on in the season has had less impact than last season, it has also let us blood out the younger guns. I feel a lot more optimistic with this squad compared to last years, and possibly a weakening of the teams this year is clouding my opinion.

I feel that Leeds should be worried, they struggled in attack and failed to score more than Wigan. In defence the leaked more points than the Wigan team.

The end result, Wigan win and our fans whinge about having a close game against one of the closest teams in the league and the team that have had the most success in recent years.

IMO that was much more than a 2 point win. We took on a good team who can turn it on on the big stage and got a result. Leeds looked rattled, giving away silly penaltys while under pressure.
Leeds did manage to limit us on the outside, but we could have been more streetwise in dealing with it.
Mybee someone more clued up on tactics can enlighten me as to why we didn't try and pin their rush defense back with the boot or set plays to make more time for our outside plays.
I haven't read the stats but we seemed to make a few breaks down the middle that required Leeds tackles to stick, Luky for them they did.
I would have been happy with the result before the game and even more afterwards.

"Debating the attack" doesn't qualify you as a doom monger. I didn't comment personally but was interested to read about that point of view. You would no doubt be in heaven if like you everyone just posted how brilliant we are, even when presented with clear evidence that our league position is no indicator of who will prevail this season. Some would say that makes you a happy clapper but that's just another figure of speech I suppose.

I think people not being satisfied with that win on Sunday is a sign of the massively high standards we've now got and that is a real positive IMO. I'm somebody who wasn't overly impressed with Sunday, I thought we were left with a few more questions of our credentials then answers, but I know we can and will play better.

I really don't get why anybody shouldn't be able to give constructive criticism. If somebody posts utter drivel about things that simply weren't there, like a lack of effort or application then fair enough bag them but when it's constructive things about tactical issues and the like then that is surely what this forum is for, to debate area's we need to improve.

I was sat on the second tier behind the posts Sam was kicking towards and I am pretty sure it drifted wide.

It has been interesting watching this article develop, it started out with the first poster just saying that we seemed to struggle when Leeds played with a rush defence. HE WAS SHOT DOWN IN FLAMES WITH THE FOLLOWING COMMENTS.

Most Points scored.
Least Points conceded.
Massive points difference compared to the opposition.

Those statistics do not mean a thing when it comes to a very close match, against Wire, Leeds and Hudds (to a lesser extent)we have been found out a few times in the last couple of years.

It is just common sense when things are not going well to have options, I was the first to post on this article and I mentioned having Sam at halfback on the odd times. Give your opponents who think they have your number something to think about.

One prime example comes to mind and I admit play 30 plus years ago was not as structured as it is today.

It was watching the great Bill Ashurst in the second row, Bill was one of the cleverest Forwards I ever saw play and without doubt the hardest .
Bill had a trick of receiving the ball even when in his own half, dropping it at his feet giving it a short punt then charging after it. All this was under the old 5 yard rule and defenders did not have much time to obstruct, if they did it was either a blatant obstruction or Bill used to take retribution.

What was brilliant about this was if Bill got through, the fullback or covering halfbacks had the choice of rushing forward to dive at Bills feet, or hang back, which was often to Wigan's advantage. Nobody dived at Bills feet if he was going for the ball.

I may have been a bit melodramatic with this post, but what I am trying to get across is always have options when thing are not going to plan.

Fair point.



Which is in a nutshell what this thread is about. My point is all the better sides have done this and we have not dealt with it very well.



That follows from what you said above. We didn't deal with it very well so when it wasn't working where was the variation?



They did need to stick but as someone else mentioned another way to deal with it was do as we did the other week and switch Sam to 6. Not all the time but that would have caused pause for thought IMO. We just don't seem to have a plan B.

It's a no-brainer to say we will be in the mix for the trophies. Unless there is an upset we will be in a semi-final for the CC. It's the semi's and finals where we will need a plan B if plan A isn't working IMO. That is when we will have to beat one of the better teams when it matters.

How do you feel are attacking structures did against Leeds on sunday?
Take into consideration
Our movement
Split halves
How we use Sam in attack
Our attacks, anything more than the obvious one if you know what that is
Leeds rush def on the flanks.

I have answered in full explaining my thoughts, since you have mentioned our structured attack in a reply post I'd honestly like to know your thoughts in case I missed something when watching the game back.

PS I also commented on the arm wrestle and pack, stating how I thought Leeds won the arm wrestle pe-silly mistakes.

Wigan play to a set structure, the players in the structure is almost irrelevant as Wigan don't play anything off the cuff. The advantage is when a player is injured someone can slot in and know the structures.
The disadvantages is a predictable attack.

There's only one player that makes a difference in our attack, Sam. Our play is geared around opening up channels for him from FB.
Just have a look at our win/loss record with and with Sam, says it all.

No, our fans spot the bigger picture, how Leeds countered our set play. If Leeds wouldn't have give away some silly pens/silly options it would have been a different story. Sinfield gifted Charnley a try.

Good post.

I feel people are focusing on how we've been hammering lesser teams and getting carried away, our attack structure does clearly work against weak teams, but that doesn't mean it'll work against the top teams.
With our structure without Sam we are 90% down on options, the whole attack is geared around opening up channels for him, just look at our win/loss record with/without Sam.

Once again a good team (only a small number of them in SL) found us out and stunted our attack. IMO there's only Wigan, Leeds, Wire and Hudds who are any good in SL.
V Hudds LOST
v Leeds LOST/WON (just)
v Wire Drew (Beaten everytime we've played them since the cup run) .

Wigan can turn over poor/average teams all day long, doesn't mean they'll be taking home the GF/SL or CC.

No ones answered to the fact that we had at least four opportunities to score that were scuffed without help from the leeds rush defence (an argument could be made for oloughlins offload to joel moon being a result of the rush defence) All of which on another day would have stuck leading to likely scores.

Been quite an interesting debate, some spectacularly missing the point but no surprise who they are. Sunday was the first time this season we've beaten a top 4 side and as I said in the original post it was good to grind out a win for a change because they are the ones that will help us when the games really matter and not 50 or 60 point thrashings.

I think we actually missed Green quite a lot on Sunday as he has been the one who seems to have the rugby brain to adapt to the rush defence out wide and has varied the play a few times by throwing dummies, putting little kicks in behind allowing Faz to score and putting doubt in the defence for future plays.

We've lost Thomas Leuluai, George Carmont, Jeff Lima, Gareth Hock and Brett Finch just from last seasons side. That is a serious amount of top quality we've lost and in the main replaced with young talent.
All this negativity about Wigan is crazy, we've absorbed the losses and look a genuinely top class team and that is an absolute credit to Wane, the rest of the staff and the players who have stepped up.

I ,for one, am really proud of how they're doing and i think we've got a great chance this year to win the Grand Final.

We definitely missed Green's smart play, although Powell had a very good game. Our attack is predictable at times, the key is to keep reinventing it throughout the season. Correct me if I'm wrong but the move to set up tomkins try was new to me, Vickery rushed up to cut out tomkins which left a gap for thornley. We need to keep using Sam as a decoy, a great tactic IMO. Wane is doing a great job with our attack.

It was more of a goal than Pat's first two!

Amazing how people can be negative of the team so far. Having lost the quality players last year and starting with a new half back partnership, and suffering the injuries to Hansen, Prescott, Lauaki, Mossop, I'm very happy to be top four, let alone top. Yes, Leeds made us work hard, but let's not forget they are the Grand Final winners, and have great pedigree in winning the competition.