Absolutely gutted I couldn't attend the stadium or watch it live on TV. Just watched a recording, unbelievable game.

Patrick Mago had the greatest stint of his career. As magical as French and Field are, there's nothing better than watching this behemoth of a man destroy defences. I don't think I've seen a player receive a standing ovation when being subbed off, but it was well deserved.

Junior Nsemba is a once-in-a-generation talent, I'd go as far as to say he's the best second row in the Super League and in a few years I'd happily bet he'd be recognised as the best second row in the world of rugby league. I just hope we can keep ahold of him, at least for a while.

The whole team was magnificent; Wardle, Field, French, Thompson etc, but I had to mention the two players above specifically for their efforts. I thought our chase for the LLS was over and we'd run out of gas, but the team have removed any doubt I had we can win it all this season.

Cracking game and atmosphere last night, absolutely superb and a great advert for the game.

Nothing really to add to what’s already been said but it’s to our credit that we put in that amount of effort and determination on the back of a really tough, energy sapping game in Perpignan last week. Not to mention the travelling, organisation and everything else that goes towards preparing for that fixture. It would have taken a lot out of the lads.

I think he is already comftortably the best in the league. There is nobody close to him and is already in the best in the world conversation. Some will laugh at that comment but he could play and not look out of place in any side. He is a machine and destined for super stardom. I would happily not sign any players and give him Isa's and Coopers wage next season in return for a new deal and a 2m release clause. The Aussies can afford it.

Go through the NRL and you have the generic hard working, long minutes back row types. Then there’s the likes of Fifita who does it in fits and starts when fit but Nsemba has something a lot don’t have and that’s the ability to hit hard in both attack AND defence. Now his defence isn’t polished yet and I wouldn’t expect it to be but if ever a homegrown marquee spot was made for someone I’d say it’s him. He’s hitting hard in defence now in a similar way KPP started to last year after he’d come to terms with the physicality of regular games in the first team.

I'm as big a fan of Nsemba as anybody but he's 20 and still weaknesses suggesting he the best in the world is cringeworthy.

He's an unbelievable athlete and a very special talent but there is plenty of potential to be fulfilled yet. Hopefully he can do that in a Wigan shirt

Who said he was the best in the world?

I said he was in the conversation. There are very few players either side of the ocean doing what he is doing. I predicted the same for KPP after his debut and was laughed at. Maybe i should be a scout. I could tell Mike Rush that only Stephens and Robertson will probably be good enough of his 'Golden Generation' as somebody pointed out though. Robertson would make a good centre if they coached him there. Still, it's all about opinions and i respectfully have a different one here

Plenty for Nsemba to work on but it's been some start. If he manages to keep his head straight, keeps working hard and continues to improve, as you'd expect he would, then he could end up as one of the worlds best. He's not yet but he's got all the ability and physical attributes to get there. Young forwards with this sort of ability come around very very rarely, certainly in this country.

Nsemba is showing the kind of talent we saw from Hock, without the downsides.

I think we need to appreciate him while we have him.

Hock is the name who comes to my mind when I think of the last young, powerful back rower we had come through and look this good instantly. Hock had better handling ability I would say but Nsemba is a menacing tackler and for all Hocks power and aggression, he was never really a big hitter in defence. I wince when I see some of the contact Nsemba makes and opposition players must be black and blue the day after a game.

That game was an absolute cracker. I live a long way from Wigan and dont get there often anymore, but I cannot remember an atmosphere like that in that stadium when Ive been present.

The noise when Liam Marshall went in for the winning try reminded me of Phil Ford's last minute try to beat Hull KR at Central Park sometime in the 80s - that was pretty noisy. (showing my age here, but I'm sure someone will be able to say the exact date of it!)

Cracking game, shame all the social media has been about the sin bins, a bog standard flop after a clean break that’s been a yellow since they’ve been introduced and a shoulder under the chin that’s been punished all season.
Anyone know what the final penalty count was because I’d be amazed if we came out on the right side of it ?

Your right it was 7-5 to KR from counting up on stats page if I counted right.

After every single win we hear the refs are biased towards us and yet-

We're the most penalised team in the league

We've won 5 penalty counts in 25 games

We've had the most bans along with Hull FC

Yeah, but we all know that statistics is RFL propaganda funded by the Wiganese Mafia! Right?

Would love to know the first half stat. By my reckoning it was about 5/6 to 1 against.

Not sure what It finished up as but it was 3-0 at one point and me and my mate were laughing about the chances of it being 3-0 to Wigan had the game been played at Craven Park



To win 5 penalty counts in 25 games is all the proof anyone needs that having Wigan society refs isn't benefitting us, as people like to claim and in fact, it may well be working the other way.

Hock was still quite strong in defence. Our highlight of the horrendous 2003 GF is probably when he smashed Vainikolo from a 20m tap in his first first-team season.

That said, Nsemba consistently dominates opposing forwards which I've not seen in a young player before. I posted similar last week after the Catalans game when he hit Bousquet and Garcia all over the place. He also rarely gets caught out in defence which is rare for a big guy.

Taking into account how good Nsemba is, Phil Gould's comments showing he's already on the NRL radar and Junior himself saying last year that he hopes to follow Pearce-Paul there one day - our chances of keeping hold of him long term look slim.

Mike Danson could decide to make him a big money offer but that would be dependent on a marquee spot becoming available.

Hock could hit but I always felt like it was the attacking side of the game that got him excited and he was never a guy who would consistently go around putting big shots on or hunting players. Nsemba is doing that and is clobbering anyone who comes near him. He's that big, he's smothering players and at times you feel almost sorry for them as he wraps them up.

I didn't pay much attention of the night but it was interesting looking back to see that he kept his place on the left hand side and Faz was on the right. I think it highlights the impact he's having already that he can move Faz over to that right hand side. He looks more threatening with his running lines on that side and defensively he looks more comfortable and those little lapses we saw on the right have gone.

I said to my son at half time that with ball in hand we were by far the better team, we just didn't have the ball enough or didn't retain it.
we gifted KR filed position in the first half to get into our end for them to attack our line, I don't recall any of their tries being from great passages of play or set pieces to break us down, however I will say they are a very good team and deserve to be pushing for top spot.
The two yellow cards were yellow cards in any game thins season KR should have no complaints about that and potentially got away with another one, but the top teams can still defend well when down a man, they failed to do that and it cost them the game, even though we appeared to be making far more line breaks even with 13 on the pitch.

Exactly this. I just managed to watch the first 40 back, and I don't know what game Dave Woods and John Wilkin were watching. KR weren't 'dominant' at all. We made 3 clean breaks in the first 25 minutes and looked dangerous every time we had the ball. Not to mention as I thought, Jack Smith was awful for us. In the first 40, the penalty count was 4-1(our sole one being the Burgess sin bin!). Despite that, we made nearly 200 metres more than them.

We made 5 errors to their 2, once we cleaned that up, there was only one winner.

I watched it back today and was surprised how in charge we looked for huge parts of the game. I thought KR had a dominant period of about 10 minutes in the first half and that was when they got their two first half tries. HKR did really well to hold Wigan out in the first 15 minutes and were on the back foot for the majority of the second half and had to scramble numerous times to keep Wigan out. I think you can judge a games flow and who were on top by thinking back to times you had to scramble in defence and how many big chances the opposition had to score. I can't really think of anything other than their tries. No last ditch efforts, players held up over the line, bombed KR chances etc.

this is what i posted on warriors fans yesterday

i've only just watched the game back on Warriors tv as was away in Egypt and absolutely no chance they were letting me put rugby on the big screen there when they were showing football from any country in the world every night

, but got to listen on the app

i dont get why everyone was blowing smoke up KR's s, Wigan made several breaks in the 1st half before they scored, and on a different night could easily have been 12-0 up. The ref was only watching one side with Wigan penalised for high shots / offside, whilst KR had nothing given against them which allowed them to build some territory, and score a soft try from dummy half and another one from lewis which needed a bit more creating

the sin bin was correct, if Burgess hadnt joined the tackle and Gildart had held on he would probably have gotten away with it unless he took it too far but again a Wigan break when they were at full strength

2nd half we smartened up a little (although still gave some silly penalties away early on) and looked like the only team who were going to score with again multiple breaks when they were at full strength

i've seen comments about how poor our spine was, well in reality what do we expect, Field only just back from injury and running about 80%, French 2 weeks back from injury, Smith from a 3 week ban, so its no surprise, so we've been playing with a makeshift spine for weeks, and been clunky for it. We are only likely to go one way from now on, as long as we get no more injuries or bans

Credit to Mago for his spell in the 2nd half as he got us playing quick and the try where he combined with Junior was just a lovely piece of classy rugby all round

the good thing is if we can tidy up the penalties and silly mistakes, then it is unlikely that a team will be able to live with us. We showed v KR in the CC semi that if we play smart and well, then we can blow them away (admittedly we have to perform to do that)

Agreed. Faz almost looks toothless in comparison to Nsemba now. Tbf he is still coming back from injury but many games this season he's been quite average with the ball - not hitting his usual lines, beating defenders or much support play. His defence was superb though. Kept Lewis (mostly) quiet all night. I think Faz is OOC at the end of next year, will be interesting to see what the club's plan is. I would guess similar to Isa but I'm assuming Faz takes up more cap space.

He will be appointed as a physio at the club once he retires.