Will this team ever be good enough?

[slimshady]

The answer is so obvious to me - we need to be fitter and more agile. You only need to look at our players shapes and compare them with Saints and it is clear which set are athletes. Without being fitter, we won't be able to recover from big efforts beating teams like Leeds, won't be able to cover back in numbers enough, and won't be able to have the team in full motion in attack (again, see the top teams).
That relative lack of conditioning is inexcusable, and down to one person - Noble.

Probably true that the players are one the heavy side but as the season draws to a close Forshaw will try to time it so that the players peak physically and mentally for the play-offs. Also teams around us havent had many injuries so I expect that will also be a factor in the run-in.

[pedro]

we are near then end and they way we are going we could end up out of the play offs....we should be peaking now

[butt monkey]

This is a comment former test forward and Kiwi stalwart Kevin Tamati made about current players.

"I played for New Zealand for seven years, 22 tests, 34 games, I had ball playing skills and defence skills, and the only thing they keep showing is the Greg Dowling fight," Tamati said.

"I've got to live with it." More than 20 years on, he doesn't see the same pride or passion in the New Zealand team.

"You don't know now if some of the players want to be New Zealanders or Australians and you ask, if they don't want to commit, will they give 100 percent. The passion of the 80s is not there now." New Zealand Rugby League chairman Ray Haffenden, also in Invercargill for the weekend, said different eras, coaches, nationalities and player motivations made it difficult to compare player passion then and now.

Is he right? Is the "lack of passion" one of the blights at Wigan or does it go deeper?

[mike binder]

super league is about fast agile and fit and we are none of them

[Big Steve]

i would be very interested to know what Noble is doing to try and sort out the inconsistency in Wigans play.

we've seen this all season where they have a good result then throw the next game away.

if we are still doing the same things in training and then just hoping we come good next game then we will never be good enough.

in my opinion we seem to be a little more creative in attack than at the start of the season. There is more movement and we look far more dangerous in the centres - especially Carmont. Hock obviously has added a huge impact since he returned. so there's at least one positive this season........

however - we don't seem to be able to maintain this - even over the course of a game. there are numerous times where we seem to have the beating of a defence (again especially on carmonts side), but then we never seem to take the attack back there for the second half. is this poor decision making on the pitch or instructions to play tighter from Noble????????????

in defence though we have gone backwards. as soon as a team gets on a roll with quick ptbs or a penalty we seem to lose the ability to defend as a team. Too many players turn their backs on the opposition, or seem to be having a rest.

One obvious thing to do would be to make better use our bench - why have a player like colbon when we could have had OCarroll on the bench. At HKR it looked like Coley was knackered and replacing him with Ocarroll would have helped freshen up the defence.

the other thing which is harder to fix and has been mentioned here already is the team attitude. we do not seem to have anyone (or a collective team spirit) that can drag us back off the floor when things are starting to slip.

e.g. peacock for leeds, any one of KC, wellens, Roby, gidley, Long for saints.

this is either down to the strength of character of our players or the quality of coaching - getting the best out of them as a unit. I think it's probably a combination of the two.

which is why someone like Ruben Wiki coming over for 1 year would actually be quite a good option. His strength of character will only do positive things for the rest of the squad.

[phibes]

A few people mentioned the lack of team spirit in this thread. I think that's part of it, we seem to be a quiet team with few leaders on the field, for example, I think we're really missing Fletcher this year. But I'm not sure if bringing in another veteran like Wiki will solve the problem. For me, that kind of import will simply plug the gap for a couple of seasons - for consistency, we need vocal leaders in the Farrell/Edwards mould who have come up through the ranks.