Widnes game

[phild1]

It's only March so no need for panic however matty Smith will always be matty Smith slow and bang average.

= phild=one word sums it up for me Determination.

[phild1]

Well that where good again, clueless, Gelling, Lockers, Flower and Powell where all superb, Mossop is about as much use as wet bog roll, Matty Smith, nice guy but needs to go, really hope this is Waneys last season in charge, we should replace him with Bettsy IMO

Gelling superb? His missed tackle was pathetic and led to the winning try and he wasn't much use for the other one scored on the right. Lockers is a great player but he made some bad errors tonight.

Smith has no idea. I hope Wane didn't needlessly rest Williams. Our attack is blunt without him and not helped by playing Lockers at 6. Why he can't play Powell there who was a half back and draft in one of the Forwards as hooker I don't know.

Personally I don't think any of the team were superb. If one stood out as a cut above it was Gildart.

== phild=well done Widnes and well done Betts.from being the jokers of SL too top of the league,got to take your hat off to them.enjoy it while you can.am I being picky or have Wigan got the worst half back pairing?

[Owd Codger]

Her we go again, blame it all on Gelling even though others were just as bad!

[Wiganer Ted]

Get in Betts, is someone having a laugh?

That Widnes set up smacks of Brett Hodgson.
Good half backs with the full back with real pace coming into their line. Betts didn't play like that nor Mick Cassidy.
That's Brett Hodgon all over.

[LORENZO]

Beaten by Widnes by traditional Wigan style rugby. How depressing.

Of course, in better times the team were coached to score under the sticks and we had the team to do that. That made some average kickers look brilliant. What's all this corner scoring nonsense now? Exciting,perhaps, but we haven't even got an average kicker. Or even an average team.

[thegimble]

The scoreline flattered us tonight.

Same could be said about the previous 5 games.

We have no idea how to break a side down with a set move.

[Southern Softy]

Couldn't see much difference in our performance tonight from the last 5 games. We got away with it in those earlier matches and we didn't tonight.

Some players had bad matches, although it might help Matty Smith if the team gave him some protection when he kicked. Compare that with the protection that Kevin Brown had - no Wigan player within yards of him (and he still put one out on the full!). We know that Gelling can't defend but it's one of the things that we have to put up with. Thought the forwards did OK - surprised that Mossop got slated - he made some hard yards.

The biggest problem was exactly as it has been all season. We come out after half-time sluggish and we then concede points. Still not sure why Bateman was penalised, however, which cost us a lot of territory and an attacking position became a try-conceding one.

We do need an attack coach badly.

I thought Widnes were a honest, hard-working team but nothing special - they were just better than us on the night. The real key is whether we can improve or simply carry on scraping home against lesser sides.

And although he didn't play particularly badly, if SW thinks that Tautai is a loose-forward - he's on his own on that one. There was no creativity from Tautai, which wasn't his fault - he's simply not a No 13 and shouldn't have been put there.

[southernpie]

The main difference for me last night compared to the rest of the season so far is we were not able to control our field position. So far this season we have been able to progress down the field almost with ease, spending a lot of time in the opponents half and restricting the opposition getting out of their half, last night we seemed to struggle getting out of our half and allowed Wignes out of theirs. So far this season with our clueless attack we have got away with results because apart from a sloppy 10 minute period when we allowed them to get back into the game, we haven't let the opposition into many try scoring positions, and we have eventually broke down their defence to get the winning score. Last night it felt to me that the majority of our 6th tackle kicks came between halfway and their 40. Once they got the lead last night I didn't feel confident that we would get into a position to use a get out of jail card. This was compounded by our inability to trap them in their own 30 for a full set of 6 without giving away cheap metres.

[OJ]

Fair play to them - they played like we used to!

[Kittwazzer]

The upstarts came and spoiled our home record and since then haven't been able to buy a win.
The Curse of Wigan strikes again. Let's hope it works on Wire as well!