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??