Improve coaching, yes.
Massive fans of Tommy and Lockers but straight in as coaches? Peet also, but he is head coach and I think he will be a good coach in time but he needs help. On the positive side Peet picked us up off the floor and we played good rugby and won some silver. Going backwards now. Some promising signings for next year but need at least one metre eater at prop and more faith in the lads coming through.

Isn’t Tommy L our attacking coach?

How can we lack a coach we already have?

He isn’t good enough is what you’re saying.

Our recruitment isn’t over, and neither are the departures from the club.

The biggest single short term change to be made is to get French back on the wing and Cust in at 6.

Beyond this season we need to bring in a 6 and let Cust go.

Keighran can play 6 so we may need to bring in a centre.

Whilst there is a hole in my rear Bevan is not a 6.

Miski has been great especially on our early set carries, his highball work has significantly improved too, but defensively in regards positioning he gets it wrong and he lacks the pace to take advantage of the half opportunities.

Ultimately we won’t get the best out of the team with French at 6.

You can add Mago and Cust to the departures, and then possibly Isa, Thornley (club needs to be ruthless with these 2 i'm afraid). that must give us some scope for addtional recruits. We have Faz as senior 2nd row, and we need to be planning for him playing less time next year, so either a signing alongside Nsemba or other junior(s) coming through. Thornley can be replaced by one of our kids, if we are planning on Wardle / Keighran being 1st choice centres

Most fans (especially on the warriors fans forum) dont rate Powell or Singleton anyway, so they arent a loss are they, so Leeming and Chan or Walters have to be upgrades, until they have a poor game, and then arent good enough

In reponse to one of the earlier posters we brought Mike Cooper in and to an extent Singleton to be our pack leaders, one hasnt really lived up to the billing and Cooper season cut short through injury. Many fans have said we needed centres for the past 2-3 seasons, we sign 2 and some still arent happy, so what are the club to do

with French and Field we have 2 of the most destructive players in the league, and the challenge is clearly how to get them both in the side, with hands on the ball and retain a functioning team. I think if Cust hadnt been injured, we may have seen a slightly different outcome and French may possibly have stayed on the wing and Miski could have been leaving. However, Miski took his chance, and whilst he hasnt got the speed of French, he does offer a massive return when bringing the ball out from our own end, and has a decent scoring record

I don't think the club needs a reality check but I agree we need to get back that intensity of the Maguire / Wane era and not accepting defeat easily.

The biggest thing we are missing is leadership on the pitch. When the going gets tough we lose all composure and start giving away dumb penalties, dropping off tackles, sloppy offloads, etc.

You can see it coming a mile off, teams get on a roll against us with a quick play the ball and the un-ravelling escalates quickly. Nobody seems to be directing us to slow things down and tighten it up, it's so predictable and horrible to watch.

We need a calm head to guide us and Farrell, Smith, French & co aren't that guy.

Now that I agree with.

Our game management is poor in tight, difficult games at times BUT it was under Maguire and Wane at times also.

I don't think there were issues with our defence on Sunday, in fact I thought we were excellent apart from letting SKD offload, but we made four of five strange calls second half which put us under pressure rather than putting more pressure on them culminating in the really strange call to kick early in golden point.

A good experienced HB would remedy some of that imo. Taking the right options at the right time etc. People have differing opinions on French, but one thing we can all agree on is that he's unorthodox in the way he plays. Is that the right option for what we need? Personally, I don't think so but others will disagree.

Things aren’t as bad as this thread might make you believe IMO but I agree with a lot of points for improvement. The mains ones for me being-

-We need two more experienced and proven quality forwards for next year (if we get get one of them for this year than great)

-We need a steady hand and a natural halfback at 6. The spine is too inexperienced to shoe horn in a second full back at stand off. I’ve been patient-ish with the move but I think I’d be making the change come Saturday.

-The players and Peet need to learn lessons. Peet is young, the spine players are young and days like Sunday can happen but take your medicine and make sure it doesn’t happen next time. If you’re prepared to put a young player on the bench, use him. If you’re in positions to win the game, make sure you’ve practised until it’s second nature how you nail it. When you have the ball on the opposition line, in those conditions, stop going for the glory play and show some patience. The amount of times we threw wild passes or kicked possession away was really poor.

I honestly don’t think we’re too far away from having a fantastic side ‘if’ we can get things right over this next few months.

It’s not just the HB or indeed French is the problem it’s the lack of creativity and power in the pack.
KPP and Mago can offload but for whatever reason they appear to have discarded this from the forwards. Smithies did a lovely offload in the CC final but I don’t think that he has repeated since.
We have no forwards who can punch holes in defences or have the ability to score form relatively close range. We have a pack of defenders who offer very little to our attack and the one forward who can run through gaps is starting to show that time may be catching up with him.

It is fixable but some of the signings so far don’t even start to fix the issues. Not sure where we are going to get a HB from unless we pay a transfer fee for say Croft. If we did that I assume that either French or Field would have to depart?
With good players in the squad such as Smith, Smithies, Field, O’Neil, Havard and French we have the seeds to develop a really good team. The next few signings will determine if we go from a competitive hard working team to the team to beat if other teams want to win trophies. I suspect with the cap and juggling quota spots it could be 2025 before we have the right balance within the squad.

That's the big one for me. Do we learn from the mistakes of Sunday or just rinse and repeat.

I agree with the vast majority of that. We are still light years ahead of where we were under Lam.
I still think we are going to struggle this year for silverware but Saints appear to have some serious injuries and that may limit their ability to land the GF this year.

Our inability to just build pressure and stay patient in the opposition 20 is a real killer for us. The amount of wild cut out passes we're throwing needs to stop, especially in conditions like those on Sunday. The game in the wet should be really simple. Complete high and try and play the game at their end and make them defend their line. If you get to the end of a set in the opposition 10, then try and force a repeat set and repeat, until they switch off. Harry Smith needs to improve in that regard but I give him leeway given his age/experience and the weight on his shoulders, minus a natural halfback partner. He's a fine kicker from hand all over the field, bar in that last 10-20 metres.

There is frustration there this year, I can't lie and the main reason is that the title is up for grabs. It's wide open and I still don't rule us out because even Saints have problems and I don't think any side is anything like being unbeatable. We're going to need to work the 6 position out and we're going to need to get Havard and Ellis on the field together, without any injuries to other big players in the pack like Faz and Smithies but if we can do that, nobody scares the life out of me. I think our big aim now has to be to finish 3rd at worst and avoid a trip over to France in the play offs (presuming they finish top). I wouldn't rule beating anybody out in a Grand Final but a trip to France is a different kettle of fish.

Saturday is huge IMO for the chances of a top 2 finish and for confidence. We can't let them come here and want it more than us. They have eyes on a cup final, they have no hooker and we need to beat them to the punch early in the game.

Could Kyle Flanagan be an option at 6? Like Sutton, he's apparently on the outer at the dogs. Probably not as experienced as we'd like, but he's got potential still.

Funnily enough, when you compare his NRL experience and career to that of Croft, there's plenty of similarities - both have played around the same number of games. Both highly rated youngsters who faltered after big moves (Croft at Brisbane and KF at the Roosters). KF is the same age as Croft was when he moved to Salford etc.

One of the main reasons for the thread is that we have rinsed and repeated with several of the failings on Sunday.

Have we learned from previous reckless challenges resulting in red cards? Have we learned from naming substitutes and then not using them? Have we learned from the lack of intellect that Peet himself stated we displayed in the Wakefield game? How about the last two Golden Points we've been involved in (one we lost and the other we gave Hull KR the first opportunity for a drop goal due to a lack of composure). We also haven't learned how to integrate Bevan effectively as a 6 over the last few weeks. There are other examples but the theme is the same - there have been opportunities to learn lessons in previous games but the learning hasn't happened.

I found myself comparing Peet's post match comments to Shaun Wane's comments after the World Cup semi final. Both highlighted the effort and commitment were good but Wane focused far more on the execution and decision making which is something I'd prefer to hear as a fan.

And that standard of the competition has greatly suffered because of it.

If Saints, Wigan and Leeds win everything, that's boring, and if everyone can beat everyone else, it just shows how the standard has dropped! If there's a downside to be found....

Agree with Nicky's comments.

We are not far off but come up short when our best two props are not playing and we lack some game management at 6.

I also feel Peet is missing some obvious areas of improvement and more worryingly doesn't seem to be learning from previous mistakes.

Not trusting a young prop who has already shown he can handle SL when we are under the pump is criminal.

We are also not making the most of the skills we have in some of the most exciting players in the league. Saying you want French to get his hands on the ball more is admirable, but if you then remove him from the areas of the pitch where he can make the most of his skills it is counterproductive.

He's also done some great things for the team and shown he can make decisions such as give Brad time over Powell, although interesting to see how that would have gone without his injury.

One question that hasn't been asked much is whether Powell would have provided that experienced head in recent game.......

I’m getting a little bit tired of “I’m proud of the effort”

You’re playing for Wigan in a cup semi final, effort should be a given.

To be fair (assuming the club reported it correctly), Powell was dropped before the decision was made for him to have the surgery. It was just decided after that it would be the best time for him to have it anyway while he was dropped.

Agree with the rest, not playing Hill at all when we were down to 12 men was criminal.

I am now an advocate of moving French back to the wing. I shared his 2022 tries video on here a couple of weeks ago and he was red hot, scoring some unreal tries from the wing and a ridiculous number to say he missed the first chunk of the season. It would be a shame for Miski and losing his carries would be hard to take, but i think it is a choice that needs to be made for the betterment of the team.

I would be giving Cust one last go at it, it was only a couple of weeks ago Peet was saying that he still had a chance to earn his 1 year option for next year, give him a chance to show how much he want it and make sure he knows that it is now or never. Failing that, i don't think Hampshire let anybody down when he had a run of a few games earlier on in the season and could be an option also.

I agree French back on the wing Miski is not time to try him in the forwards could be a good bench spot .

All clubs go through periods of transition, but Wigan seem to have been in one for years.
Most posts on here are looking at important, but tactical, issues like on field leadership, playing people out of position, etc, but I think the Strategic side has been largely ignored by the club.
I could be wrong but I haven’t seen much evidence of forward planning, for example we seem to have recruited very poorly, in a piecemeal way, instead of acting on a set of objectives to achieve. I wonder if the coaches, who seem to have been chosen for their easy availability rather than their coaching experience and achievements, have a clear set of performance achievements for individual players, themselves and the team?
Obviously I’ve no inside information on how the club specifically operates but I have my suspicions, based on what I’ve seen.
The positive is that the new owner will hopefully develop a team culture based on proven leadership and performance elements, such as clear planning and making sure everyone knows exactly what is required of them, and what the consequences of failing to comply are. If Mr Danson can deliver that ethos to the organisation, then we might be celebrating after big games instead of hearing coaches praising the team effort after another defeat.

After todays easy win no it does not

For years we’ve lamented a lack of forward power from our props and direction from hooker and we’ve gone and splashed the cash to resolve that issue. Those signings will undoubtedly improve us in that area and I have confidence our back line can and will take full advantage of the gains from our pack.

French isn’t a 6, he’s not doing awful there by any stretch of the imagination but it isn’t his best position and for me that best position is full back, drifting in and out of play exactly like Field is doing. He’s a good winger but I still don’t think it’s his best position nor is it for me a long term position.

That’s a problem. In essence, we’ve signed 2 players who are incredibly similar for one position. We may well end up having to decide which to keep and which to let go. An impossible choice!

Shorrocks, Powell, Mago, Cust, Isa, Thornley, KPP, Hampshire, Byrne should be leaving, if not this season then the next. With the signings we’ve made and signings yet to be made or announced I do think our squad will be improved exponentially.

The pressure will then really be on for Peet and whilst I don’t think he’s a bad coach and haven’t come anywhere close to believing or thinking he should go, we’ve got to see more consistent performances and our discipline on and off the ball has to be improved from its poor state. Otherwise he may well be added to the leaving list.

agree with most of those

Shorrocks gives us some utility value, so i would retain as a squad player, but then its down to the player if he wants to be playing 1st team week in week out and moves on. He can do a decent job in more than one position (i'm not saying he's great), but can cover in the backs and pack

Byrne IMO, has been battered over the last couple of seasons, starting with Lam and then not really getting a rest when others have been injured or banned. I'd be happy to see how he goes next season with an on paper better pack, and take it from there. I think he has potential but just not kicked on

re your point on French and Field



. The fans love them both as they can both do something out of nothing, but equally i think we all think they are better at full back. It will take a brave decision to let one of them go, but it may need to be taken for the betterment of the team dynamic