Not impressed by the Wigan team and by that i mean on paper. Pack too small, half backs not good enough and Loughlin will only get involved if you reach the big games.

Likes of Farrell seem to be going backwards far too many penalties and silly mistakes to the lads game.

It worries me as well. I feel the Shaun Wane approach seems to be a lot of aggression in the hit up and tackle. I don't think he wants us to be a team of thugs but a team that are formidable and strike fear. Unfortunately he doesn't seem to have instilled the right mentality to go with that. Once we become aggressive we become angry, our discipline goes to smoke and we end up in brawls.

Either we need to change our mental approach with regards to aggression (I.E. Non-personal, calm and professional with the knowledge that it gains us an advantage in the match, not to make us look like we have the bigger dicks) or we change our approach to games completely.

Can we have pat back please

Good job we don't play on paper then.

You can't even beat 12 man Widnes.

Lucky to get a point in the end.

Farrell is a big liability for you guys. The weakness tonight was the halfs for me, simply did not control the game. Your number 6 looks like he can drive the ball in well but seems to lack the confidence to direct runners or find "that pass". Clubb, Tautai were the only dominating forwards but I was suprised by the lack of strength in the forwards from a wigan team tonight.

Bateman looks like he's maturing into a quality player too.

No doubt you'll still be up there though.

I thought Logan did ok starting but for me Williams is the best option for interchange hooker. Wane has said he is going to stick with Williams at 6 for the forseeable but for me Powell is the best option at 6 (maybe Hampshire but can't see it happening anytime soon) with Williams coming off the bench. If we're going to play with a bench hooking option then at least bring on someone who offers something different to McIlorum, not one who plays a similar style but who does it nowhere near as well.

I don't think personnel is the major issue tbh; if Wane thinks Smith and Williams is his best hb pairing then that's fine, they will take time to gel and improve even if the fans think it's the wrong choice. Ill-discipline and poor completion cost us the LLS last season with several poor away performances towards the back end of the year, and that has cost us 1 point against 12 men tonight. We are simply giving teams too many easy opportunities to get at us with mistakes and penalties.

Our success over the last few years has been built around patient build-up play and setting up excellent attacking structures. We seem to be moving away from that a bit, trying more offloads and short-balls in difficult situations, and IMO it's not working. Step 1 has to be getting back to the low error, high completion rugby that has been the foundation of the Maguire/Wane era. Without question the discipline needs to improve 10-fold. Farrell has tried to add a "hardman" image to his game and it has completely detrimented the overall standard he plays at.

Smith and Tomkins want banning for 1 game at least. Amazing indiscipline just frustration when the ball is dead.

We got totally suckered in to things tonight and paid the price. The lack of composure shown over pre season and tonight is unforgivable. I've also got to agree with what's being said about Faz. This tripe from Wane that he needs to be more aggressive is just that! He's a line breaking back row who plays the game at a high intensity and gets through tonnes of work not an aggressive enforcer. Lads like Joel Tomkins and Bateman have a natural aggression, Faz does not.

In the plus side I thought there were some positives. Joel Tomkins looks much more like his old self with the ball, Gelling continues to grow, Logan Tomkins was busy, Tautai looks a good signing and I thought Sutton was superb and looks a superb prospect.

No problem with Tomkins at the end. It's an aggressive sport played by hard men. Tomkins felt one if his teammates was under threat and reacted.

The situation that lead to that though however was embarrassing. Smith needs a word with himself.

Here are my thoughts.

1) As has been said on here before, Farrell is an incredibly frustrating player. He's full of errors and ill discipline and generally a lot of stupidity. Funnily enough he then goes and makes a break and scores a try and all seems to be forgotten amongst some of our fans. The fact is that he's stagnating and not really developing and his lack of size is still a concern.

2)Goal kicking is still an issue. Inconsistency the main problem. Smith wasnt awful in this game but he missed the one which appeared easier than the others. Also, when we get penalties we arent making many metres when we kick it into touch. As was said at the fans forum, we may need someone who can kick with distance as well as accuracy.

3) Joe Burgess had a shocker. I really dont see the point in playing him either. He's undoubtedly got a bit of skill but he's hardly excellent and its time Manfredi was given his chance. Burgess should be sent up to Workington for the rest of the season in my opinion.

4) Williams really wasnt as good as others were making out. He had a few nice flick passes but that isnt what will win us games. Its consistently getting the ball to the line which will help us and he seemed reluctant too again. He messed up the chance to tackle Mellor and prevent that try aswell.

5) Matty Bowen. Offered nothing, really poor and even was to slow to outrun some of their props. If Hampshire hadnt have had a shocker of a pre-season hes easily be in this team.

6)Clubb, Bateman and Tautai were all pretty decent. Very impressed with Clubb.

I think you are right.you looked good in chunks tonight and normally would have steam rolled widnes after the sending off.

Still,got a point and the younger guys will have learnt so much more tonight than they would have in a season at lower grade.

Wigan still the team to beat with saints for my money.

I'm confused. I've been getting told all off season that it's easy to beat a team with 12 men? That's apparently the only reason we won the grand final anyway! But the mighty Wigan can't do it.

strange

Tautai getting a fair bit of praise but his unforced error late in the game was critical, he has the odd error in his game so hopefully works on erasing them.

Impressed with Tautai and Bateman..
but the rest
oh dear.......

Yes, there was that one awful pass in the first half from Bateman that broke down a promising attack, but generally he was lively, and did actually look like a centre! And Tautai was busy too.

Matty Smith deserves a game ban just for being a spoilt baby at the end and lashing out. No problem with Joel though, if you look, whenever he gets involved he doesnt throw punches, or even fight for that matter. 9/10 times he just pins them to the ground to diffuse a situation (obviously last night was an error in judgement from him as there was nothing to diffuse).

I thought Tautai, Clubb, Bateman, Joel and Gelling (before he moved to the wing) were OK last night. But i really was not impressed with Burgess and Bowen. Between them they cost us a 3/4 try swing. Burgess bombed easy walk in try and then gave Widnes their first try, and Bowen threw a couple of forward passes at key times.

As for people calling us thugs again, surely it was 6 and half a dozen. Apart from at the end which was Smith's fault, the rest of the niggle throughout the night was fairly mutual (eg. O'Carroll starting it after Mellor fell over on his kick chase). It made us look worse on TV by the Widnes fans calling the referee. Blatant knock on from their player and when we get the scrum the Widnes fans shout 'you don't know what you're doing' cringe



Surely the Ah Van red was the correct decision, accidental or not he attacked the head, and knocked the player out giving him concussion.

Overall it was a very disappointing night, and Child's officiating was laughable at times for both teams. What was he playing at giving a knock on when Gelling got pushed back at the play the ball when we were 1 metre out from their try line. But on the other hand Farrell got away with a couple of high shots that should've been penalties.

As I said though, we definitely didn't deserve to win and in fact for the way Widnes played with only 12 men they probably deserved both points.

Not brilliant by your lot but nothing that Wane can't put right in a week. Discipline and a bit more sharpness and you're up and running. Only a fool would suggest that Wigan hasn't got a team entirely capable of challenging for every trophy. More's the pity

I've waited until this morning to post because I was so angry coming out of the ground last night.

But I'm afraid I still feel the same.

That second half was the most shocking performance of Shaun Wane's tenure. Something is wrong when a man like Matty Smith is kicking out at opponents. The culture needs to be looked at because Wigan have a reputation that will take years to get rid of. We are known as a bunch of thugs throughout the league. The discipline was woeful.

At 16-0 up against 12 men and Kev Brown off the pitch it should have been a rout. Burgess drops a sitter on the line and then another one on halfway and they break away and score. Mellor still had plenty to do and should have been caught. Burgess needs to be dropped. If your winger can't catch the ball I'm afraid he shouldn't be playing. Not good enough. All of a sudden we had a game. We allowed their crowd to get behind them. Shouldn't have happened.

Bateman was excellent at second row early on and it was a shame he had to be moved. He was our best player by miles. I thought Joel did ok, Clubb did ok, Tautai did ok. The rest were awful. The halves gave us nothing although Maty's kicking was pretty good. Lockers was as rusty as hell. Faz had his worst game for Wigan and was a liability. Bowen cost us a try as usual. Logan was better than Powell who was completely anonymous.

I saw this coming in the pre season. The performances at Leigh and Saints were rubbish, but of course, friendlies don't count blah blah - but the signs were there, for anyone who bothered to look.

We now have a massive problem at full back. Bowen costs us a try a game and offers nothing in attack. Hampshire isn't a full back. Maybe Sarge will be the answer, but that creates problems elsewhere.

Positives - Lockers was as rusty as hell, so can only improve. Joel looked much better. Bateman has to be a regular starter, first name in the second row before Faz and Joel. If Joel plays second row then Faz is benched. Manfredi is a decent replacement on the wing. On last night's performance Burgess can go to Sydney now - if they'll have him.

The players are going to have to get used to it, every team now will be trying to wind them all up,discipline is zero!

The players are going to have to get used to it, every team now will be trying to wind them all up,discipline is zero!

Farrell seems to be taking on the mantle of Dudson now, really stupid play to give so many unnecessary penalties. SW keeps complaining about our terrible penalty count, but can’t seem to get the message through to the blokes who keep racking em up. Burgess if your hands are cold mate try blowing on your fingers and rubbing them together a bit, then you might not drop so many vital passes. Nice one to: Gelling, Bateman, Tautai, and Sutton. Pluses for: Williams and L Tomkins. Let’s just be glad that Ah Van doesn’t play for us, well after Smithy’s vicious and brutal kicking episode lol, we could be getting a name for being thugs from scouse-land!

Thought we looked really good for first 20 minutes. Williams played very well at the start, nice to see him looking to break the line. Bateman played very well and Tautai was impressive. The Mellor try was the key to the rot setting in. We were in total control up to that point. Once they scored we became nervous and I could see us throwing it away from that moment on. We lacked composure last night which was shown up by Mattys kick out at the end.
Difficult to go on one game, but I think Bowen should be left out for Rocky, apart from one good claim off a bomb he was poor in defence, to not even attempt to stop that grubber kick isn't good enough. As for his forward pass, a half decent pass there and I think we would have had a game winning try.
Discipline is a big worry for me. Give away soft penalties and you don't win games. What has happened to Farrell?

I watched the game with an old friend of mine from Wigan... he said something along the lines of 'we have the richest history in the country, an apparent endless production line of quality rugby league players, yet we are coaching them to go out and behave like thugs... The name of our great club is being tarnished more and more each season. Something needs to be done before its too late.. if its not already'.

Pretty fair assessment i thought... if it was a team from the bottom of the league playing like this, i suppose you could understand it. But Wigan? It's not good for the club OR the game.