THE NEW MATTY SMITH

[Caboosegg]

Very strange.

One supporter saying Smith is good when the forwards are on top and another saying he is average when the forwards are on top.

Poor lad can never win!

its because he plays to Wanes plan and doesn't do super dupa amazing displays of solo skill,

id Have Smith over Gale anyday, Gale is a whinging sod who loses his cool when he doesnt get his own way.

Smith is a workhorse who puts his all in and you can see trying to motivate the team to keep it up or turn it around.

Sadly i don't feel people will appreciate what Smith gives until hes gone.

[platt-warrior]

But Gale does kick goals,his defence is better and he is more elusive imo

[cow yeds]

Smith is lucky to be playing in an era when there is a shortage of scrum halves. Go back a few years and nearly every side had a decent one.

[moto748]

Actually goal-kicking would be one of the least of my beefs about Smith. Certainly lately he's kicked well, surely as well as most of his counterparts in SL, and his career stats are little worse than so-called 'good' kickers like Cam Smith and Jamie Lyon.

Smith's strong suit is his long-kicking game and field goals, but even that is patchy, sometimes excellent, sometimes straight down the throat of the opposing full-back. And as for "super dupa amazing displays of solo skill", we don't expect Shaun Johnson (although that would be nice ), but some ability to step a man and go through a gap should be part of every decent half's arsenal, as we saw Sneyd do at the DW the other week.

[DaveO]

Matty smith did not carry the team when the injury crisis hit he went missing in several matches I've never seen as many forwards kick a ball in my life as when williams was out.

He still has all the faults he had before tomkins and williams return the difference is they are doing a lot more of the work and making him look better

however TL is not the answer either too old and too many hard matches under his belt. He was better for us at hooker than he was at scrum half.

I agree with this 100%. Perhaps (and this is hard to type as it suggests Wane knows a bit about coaching ...) Wane is also aware of his limitations and so is giving the other players the responsibility.

So for me a player (as someone else said) who has a bit of pace and a step in addition to what attributes Smith has would be a huge improvement.

It wouldn't be TL though even if you wound the clock back 5 years because I think people forget he was criticised for having no kicking game and wasn't considered the perfect 7 either.

I suppose if you could wind the clock back it would be interesting to see which of Smith or TL was better for Wigan despite neither being perfect. I suspect it might be TL.

I loved watching TL run at defences (could be unstoppable) and tackle players like Micky Mac but I'd be wary of signing him again at this stage of his career.

[Owd Codger]

Smith is lucky to be playing in an era when there is a shortage of scrum halves. Go back a few years and nearly every side had a decent one.

No shortage of British Scrum Halves, just that Clubs prefer to sign them from down under as shown by the number playing at Super League clubs.

Prior to Smith we also had Scrum Halves from down unde like Lam, Dobson and Leuluai

[moto748]

I watched TL for the Warriors against the Sharks last night,. Went pretty well, scoring a (controversial) try in the process. As he has the last few times I've seen him.

[Nezza Faz]

[quote="Wigan Watcher"][quote="moto748"]I think it's fair to say that even though Cas were well beaten, Gale still looked more of a threat than Smith.[/quot



In my opinion Gale only started to threaten after HT when Cas were so far behind, they had to play "catch-up" football, with all the offensive risks that's associated with. They literally were playing "basketball" in efforts to break down our defence and were very lucky several times that the ball went into Cas hands after it broke down or was mishandled.
Gale was very often just found to be criss crossing and running across the field, without making any ground. May have looked threatening, but to a savvy defence, is quite controllable. And the gaps he may have been looking for weren't there and once or twice he gave "suicide" passes in a panicked effort just to get rid of the ball.
Smith, on the other hand, may have looked more a predictable type, but it was the type of game that had a winning look to it, also with a kicking game that was better than theirs.

[Wormburner]

I like him