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I agree with cpwigan that the problem is a cultural one.
We are not as fit or as agile as full time professional athletes ought to be. Saints look for the best in the business and we go for the old pals act.
Regardless of his tactical failings, it is this that damns Noble in my eyes.
3 examples -
Anderson stated that they had to change Pryce's "body shape" in the 3 years he has been at Saints. Everyone sees the results, but that is testimony to the difference that proper conditioning can bring.
Hargreaves has gone from being not a big loss to helping hold Super League's most impressive team together in the absence of Fozzard and Cayless for much of the year. They are clearly getting far more out of him than we could.
Saints have a Wiganer coaching them wrestling and agility, we have someone their caoch coached. We nearly took their wrestling coach, but that was vetoed when Forshaw came in.
It is a disgrace that we cannot put in place world leading conditioners and coaches.
You only need to look at the agility and movement in the Saints' team and compare it with the heavy footed plodding of our own team for large parts of each game to see where we are going wrong. Yesterday, Gene makes a break past Tomkins and he doesn't even turn and chase until the try is scored. Poor play, but poor play which flows from low fitness and poor preparation.

cherry.pie wrote:Of course there are players playing poorly in the side. There are players who aren't fulfilling their potential.
I simply feel that you wrongly highlighted players who are not the ones to blame ahead of any others.

I wasn't meaning to single players out but rather point out that we can't just blame the likes of Fielden and Higham (for example) for the way the season has gone. On RL fans there is a good example of this. Higham does a forward pass and HKR score from the resulting plays. They then go on to have 59 consecutiveness tackles against us and Higham gets the blame for all of them despite being off the pitch at the time. No mention that the rest of the team could not deal with HKR.

At the moment for next season we have Riddle, Smith and if we are lucky Pryce to get this team (which will lose Barrett, Higham and Calderwood) up to the next level.

I agree that as a team we are not good enough at the moment, but that is not a reason to single out those players.
You say McIlorum is playing poorly, but from what I've seen he seems to be playing well for someone his age. The same goes for Goulding and Joel Tomkins. I'm not saying these guys are going to walk into the Saints or Leeds squad, but they are some of the most promising young players in the country.

I sometimes think McIllorum gets praise for who he isn't not who he is. He isn't Micky Higham. If you watch McIllorum the things he is not so good at is ball distribution. His passes are quite slow and often below knee high or to the head. They don't often hit the target and his passing off the deck is pretty awful.

That is just my view of how he has played this year. If you look back over my posts pre-season you will see I thought of the two young players in the squad, him and Goulding I thought he was the one that looked the part but it hasn't happened for him so far IMO. I am not singling him out as such but he is an example of why collectively the team isn't good enough. There are too many little failings with too many players which when you add them up mean the team as a whole is not good enough.

As for Leuluai he has been one of our better players in a number of matches. It seems like some people are just going to criticse him no matter what. There's no point in expecting him to be like Barrett because they are different players, but Tommy certainly gets involved in more of the play and shows up for the whole game where as Barrett drifts in and out when he pleases, that's just the nature of his game.

TL has had another mixed season. His play v Leeds for example was very good. Instead of the usual and predictable grubber kick when close to the line on the last tackle he varied it a bit. Against Qunins the week before he ignored at least two overlaps and did the predictable grubber when in the same situation. That sums his season up for me. Good one week not so good the next which is how the team is overall.

Also defensively Barrett has been just as poor, if not more so, that Tommy. He is often responsible for jumping out of the line and leaving gaps that are often exploited by other teams, a possible reason why we concede soft tries down the middle. He is not solely to blame however.

TL isn't exactly brilliant in defence either with a tendency to go for the monster hit and when he misses he leaves a huge gap.

Our biggest problem this season has been defense, but it is the defensive line that appears to be the biggest problem rather than individual defence. The team don't seem to read what the other players are doing. Surely that problem is down to the defensive coach/head coach to get the team to defend like one. You can't teach a single player to defend like a team you need the whole set.

The players have to put their bodies on the line in defence and I think cpw has a point here about attitude and ethos. The quote from Edwards about it being unacceptable to not line up in the defensive line even when injured etc is not something I get the impression applies at Wigan at the moment.

Dave

i think there is a comfort zone at jjb which needs destroyed. Noble could well be a big part of this and needs to chnge or go.He also needs to take a look at what saints/cats are doing at the moment because we are light years away. Lack of pace helps kill us everyweek, a bad kick (tl) or pass(MH) and we are struggling to cover. we should have brought briscoe back as pats support in attack is poor and Feka is being targeted as a poor defender and is not doing enough going forward to balance this out.I think piggy will make a big difference next year playing the hooker role more like Cunningham/Newton intead of playing the same type of hooker for eighty mins.We need a hard working prop (moore/fozzy) who go out and earn their wage even though they aren,t the most talented players in the world

Dave to a large extent you are right to identify players seemingly not playing well. Whatsmore, remember, these players were better than what other clubs had to work with. We also have far more of these players.

The coaching methodology seems wrong. An example. Hookers are vital in modern RL. Irrespective of what system you use a coach should say to his hooker/team. Our hooker has total freedom to override the game plan if he sees something is on. So if he wants to run solo he does. If he wants to try to crash over at the POTB he does. I am convinced Wigan's hookers are discouraged from running.

The pursuit of excellence. Firstly I am a Goulding fan. However, a Goulding scoot from the POTB will be run open followed by an inside hop jump. Why is he not being encouraged / trained to develop alternative skills / options. The Carmichael Hunt hop jump has about 4 variations. If Goulding can add a small amount of extra pace it could have devestating effects. He looks a bit too chunky to me and he is 20. EVERY player add girth as they age.

With the pursuit of excellence add fun. How boring are our scrum plays. The players loved those ultra complicated Lowe set moves. Players need to see a training ground ploy = a try otherwise the desire to train hard is diminished.

pieater-alex wrote: Were you saying that last week? I know I wasn't but I would agree with what you have said this week. I don't understand this current group of players. I can't put my finger on just what is missing.

I honestly thought after last week we would finally have the opportunity to kick on. I knew HKR were without several players and I could not see a reason for us to lose to them. Not with Feka back (but I had not counted on O'Carroll being left out) and the team seemingly playing a more expansive game.

So when I came down to earth with a bump what I see is the story of our season repeated once again. Great win followed by appalling loss. This is not IMO the mark of a good side. Hence the question.

While Noble must take a large chunk of the blame I can probably go through the entire team and point out a pretty big weakness with all of the first 17 bar about two or three players. Add it all up and put in a seemingly frail mental approach to the game and we have what we have.

I think quite a few of the players have to improve as players quite a bit in terms of application and skill if this crop of players is to achieve anything. Some can't for example Colbon should have no place in the side when other player in his positions (wing and 2nd row) are fit.

The team isn't changing a great deal next year so we are relying on Riddle, Smith (to fill Barrets boots) and Pryce to give it that cutting edge or incisiveness IL has talked about when we signed Phelps. I am not convinced they will make a huge difference (in part because of the way Nobby selects teams) and so hope we get at least one top class addition to the squad from somewhere. Though why they would come here I don't know at the moment and if O'Carroll was offered a deal by Les Cats I bet he wished he'd taken it already!

Dave

So when I came down to earth with a bump what I see is the story of our season repeated once again. Great win followed by appalling loss. This is not IMO the mark of a good side. Hence the question.

Is this not the key though Dave you rightly refer to side/team. I would argue that we are not a side/team but rather a collection of individuals.

Individuals who sometimes pull rabbits out of hats to enable us to win BUT how often do you see a Wigan try and think wow what a team. Even v Leeds. Hock brilliance followed by Trent's superb kick. A brilliant Trent cut out pass for a try. A great kick/great catch leading to a try, Goulding scrambling through a hole for a try. How many tries do Wigan score where the ball passes through several hands and does not involve a kick?

Defence is 99% teamwork and we know how bad our defence can be.

If we apply blame to the players then we must say Trent your not a very good player. Most people think he is not playing as well this season (not my opinion) For me if Trent played for Saints or Leeds they would not lose a gamr all season. Cronulla will look great next season with Trent.

Great teams make players look better than they are. Bryn Hargreaves being a prime example. When Wigan had great teams, you left Wigan and you went downhill. People could rightly argue that most players who leave Wigan now see their career go uphill.

TWO EYED WARRIOR wrote:[quote]http://www.wiganwarriors.com/new ... 36[/quote]

Pretty poor rsponse from IL imo.

If i was him id be searching for some serious answers as to why we cant back up the Leeds display

It's better than Nobles but Cpw comments in the thread where he mentions this are spot on. The fact they go 59 consecutive tackles says as much about our lack of pressure on them as it does them playing mistake free football.

It would be nice if someone at the club acknowledged the failure to pressure the opposition not seemingly accept the fact they had such a great completion rate etc.

Dave

DaveO wrote:

TWO EYED WARRIOR wrote:[quote]http://www.wiganwarriors.com/new ... 36[/quote]

Pretty poor rsponse from IL imo.

If i was him id be searching for some serious answers as to why we cant back up the Leeds display

It's better than Nobles but Cpw comments in the thread where he mentions this are spot on. The fact they go 59 consecutive tackles says as much about our lack of pressure on them as it does them playing mistake free football.

It would be nice if someone at the club acknowledged the failure to pressure the opposition not seemingly accept the fact they had such a great completion rate etc.

Dave

We can only hope that within the confines of the club IL is the complete opposite and blasts nobby and lays it on the line. Trouble is we have been here before this season with these type of discussions etc and we are no firther forward IMO

We might not all agree upon the solution but I think it is unaminous that we are all at boiling point re the inconsistency and poor displays. I read on RLfans.com re a fan waiting for an hour after the game to express his frustration. When people do that it says things have reached an unacceptable point.

Howdo people feel about Friday?

Personally - Afraid that we will be humiliated again

cpwigan wrote:We might not all agree upon the solution but I think it is unaminous that we are all at boiling point re the inconsistency and poor displays. I read on RLfans.com re a fan waiting for an hour after the game to express his frustration. When people do that it says things have reached an unacceptable point.

Howdo people feel about Friday?

Personally - Afraid that we will be humiliated again

My heart says damage limitation my head says a massacre again :conf: