I agree. People were pointing to the fact his penalty count in the stats for Hull was quite low and nothing out of the ordinary.

Well you know what they say, lies, damned lies and statistics.

If those penalties cost you games he does not have to give very many away to be a liability as he proved last night.

At 27 he is an experienced player so I am afraid this is what you get with him and it can't be put down to lack of experience.

Why is Lauaki getting picked over Lima? Baffling.

Wane's ego concerns me. He's trying his best to justify HIS signing & it's to the detriment of the team.

Shocking from Lauaki last night, but Wane signed him. He knew what he was capable of. I blame him!

hes not is he? hes starting, but i thought that was as prescott/mossop/lima are the senior and more reliable props, so bringing lima on with flower maintains a certain amount of stability.

Hopefully that is the case, but I'm pretty sure Wane said before the season started that players doing well will start, those that don't perform will be dropped to the bench or the under 20's.

I don't like having a thug with no brains in our team, especially not two of them.

Having intelligence as a quality is more important than speed, power and skill as an RL player in my opinion.

This is why I'm not a fan of either Lauaki or Hock. Lauaki for obvious reasons evidenced last night plus the fact he's hardly a world beater anyway. As for Hock, despite all his skill and power doesn't he just wipe all that out with the constant knockons, penalties, crazy decisions etc?

As far as I can remember everyone was panicking when he received his drugs ban in 2009. And as far as I can remember we actually improved as a team - we became far more solid and gave little away.

When Hock was banned other players ended up giving away more penalties. O'Loughlin, Tomkins, Hoffman, Bailey etc.

Hock makes errors but he also has the potential to win games and he's been one of our best players so far this year. Westwood is worse than Hock in terms of conceding penalties and making errors yet is considered one of the best players in Super League.

Hock is an excellent player to have.

Lauaki on the other hand, does very little during games and anything he does do seems to be stupid.

We will have to see what happens assuming he gets a ban. I doubt we will miss him at all so if other players step up and play well he ought to find it very hard to get back in the team assuming we have no injury worries.

The trouble is he has a four year deal (God knows why we gave him a deal like that given his form at Hull) and as he is supposed to be Wane's signing I fear he will be back in the side far too readily.

So were his minutes on the field

There isn't room for 2 hot headed forwards in our team that play the game on the edge and run the risk of costing you points.

Hocks a justified selection because he's superb and he's worth the silly stuff but when he plays id keep Lauaki away from the side. He's been pretty good so far but he got it totally wrong last night and cost his team big time. He simply can't be allowed to get away with it to the point where if I were Wane I'd want to fine him.

Spencer or Dudson should get a shot on Friday.

Quote ="MadDogg"Lauaki last night did exactly what most said he would do in the big games. Lose his cool.'" your not wrong some pretty underwhelmed pie eaters from the initial rumours of his signing... notice the post from dany1979 after watching him play for hull viewtopic.php?f=28&t=502890&start=100 Quote Even his own players were annoyed with him last night, Tickle was certanly not happy with his dumb penalty on his own line.'" not a great signing....and on the forwards I thought Prescott was a handful more so than Lima I'm just off to watch the game again now but he didnt appear to get much game time from what i remember which suprised me??

Quote ="MadDogg"Lauaki last night did exactly what most said he would do in the big games. Lose his cool.'" your not wrong some pretty underwhelmed pie eaters from the initial rumours of his signing... notice the post from dany1979 after watching him play for hull viewtopic.php?f=28&t=502890&start=100 Quote Even his own players were annoyed with him last night, Tickle was certanly not happy with his dumb penalty on his own line.'" not a great signing....and on the forwards I thought Prescott was a handful more so than Lima I'm just off to watch the game again now but he didnt appear to get much game time from what i remember which suprised me??

Quote ="the flying biscuit"your not wrong some pretty underwhelmed pie eaters from the initial rumours of his signing... notice the post from dany1979 after watching him play for hull viewtopic.php?f=28&t=502890&start=100 not a great signing....and on the forwards I thought Prescott was a handful more so than Lima I'm just off to watch the game again now but he didnt appear to get much game time from what i remember which suprised me??'" It was only Prescott's third game back after having back surgery in the off season, so he's not likely to be fully fit yet. When he gets up to speed though he could be a real handful. He's knocking people flying when he runs which is good, but he hasn't even started to use his ball playing skills yet, which IMO are as good as any forward in Super League.

Quote ="the flying biscuit"your not wrong some pretty underwhelmed pie eaters from the initial rumours of his signing... notice the post from dany1979 after watching him play for hull viewtopic.php?f=28&t=502890&start=100 not a great signing....and on the forwards I thought Prescott was a handful more so than Lima I'm just off to watch the game again now but he didnt appear to get much game time from what i remember which suprised me??'" It was only Prescott's third game back after having back surgery in the off season, so he's not likely to be fully fit yet. When he gets up to speed though he could be a real handful. He's knocking people flying when he runs which is good, but he hasn't even started to use his ball playing skills yet, which IMO are as good as any forward in Super League.

I still feel even with a fit Mossop we're a prop short at the minute. I'm made up with Mossop, Prescott and Lima who are all amoungst the best props in the league but Flower isn't big enough and Lauaki isn't smart enough to be that 4th prop.

I think Spencer and Dudson need to be given some opportunities to nail that spot if we can't get Fielden back on the field.

I never knew dropping the ball every match means he has good handling. His ball retention is awful at times.

That's one error!! His average errors last year were 0.4 errors per game. That's hardly enough to warrant concerns about ball retention.

His error last night was just one of those things. When you burst through a tackle you're always susceptible to a ball steal.

Besides, ball handling generally refers to offloading and passing ability.

I did like this tweet from Ryan Atkins: @samtomkins1 body bit sore but that's prob from when Prescott used me as a speed bump from the kick off ha #massivehuman

I hope there are a few more sore players as Prescott gets his match fitness back.

Prescotts really maturing now and he gets better and better. He was flagging at times last night but once his match fitness is back I expect him to push on towards an England place.

I really do think he's good enough.

agreed

To be fair to Lauaki, it's the only two brain farts I've seen him do this year.

Ignoring Friday night, Lauaki has been a good signing. Simple as that.

After only watching replay last night and taking the stuff that went against us in the game out Lauaki cost us the game . That's top and bottom of it . Use of the arm = 1 penalty 2 points ,then that tackle = 2 points that give them the win , but before the last 20 mins where he lost his head he was doing ok

I've seen him do a few more. Against Leeds when he needlessly lost his cool against Bailey, against Catalans when he stupidly rushed in to shove Sa when he was stood about 30 yards away, and against Widnes when it looked like the game was lost he went around hitting players late off the ball.

In terms of his performances, he's had one good game, a few average games and a few poor games. Both Flower and Lauaki have been unspectacular but Flower has made up for it with his excellent work rate. Lauaki hasn't made up for it with anything. His technique in defence is pretty shocking and his technique running with the ball is incredibly ineffective. He runs at the defence, then turns around and steps backwards and goes looking for another player to run at. It's exactly like Fielden when he was playing terribly. If Lauaki just ran as hard as he could like Prescott, Lima, Mossop and Flower then he might be slightly useful.

Spot on that mate

Thank god for that.

Granted it was a shocker to give away easy points in a very close game, but some of the knee jerking on here about him as been a little o.t.t.

People have been crying out for a nasty piece of work in the forwards since Pongia and Smith left. When one arrives however they are up in arms when he wallops someone.

His work rates good, his ball skills are pretty good and imo his attitude is good.

Pongia and Smith were hard not thick. They wouldn't have been caught out in a situation like Lauaki was on Friday.

Lauaki has been good so far up until the last 10 mins on Friday. Sadly he's cost us the game in that spell and it's not acceptable. He's an experienced player that should know better and his errors warrant him playing for the u20's for a week or two.

Wigan need to breed a culture that rubbish like that won't be tolerated.

In between the two he got penalised for he also took Briers out very late after a last tackle kick to the corner for Monaghan. He had obviously lost his head and should had been interchanged before giving away the match losing penalty.

I dont think he will be even in the u20s for the next two weeks i think he will be in the stands due to him going to get banned.

Rather that then him being in the first team for a while.

I just hope Mossop is back. If he is I'd get him in the side alongside Spencer on the bench at Salford with Lima and Prescott starting. Those 2 were excellent on Friday. If Flower plays then it should be in the back row. I thought he played pretty well on Friday but we can't keep playing him at prop.