Positives from today?

[Owd Codger]

The only good thing about the second half was that it allowed the team to get in a lot of tackling practice!

[Exiled Wiganer]

No one being injured was the only thing that really mattered.
On Clubb, and Sarginson, having seen a lot of them over the years, here are my thoughts...
I have no doubt that Clubb will be an international standard prop for many years, and that he, Taylor and Flower could tie down 3 spots for the next 5 years. He has everything and more to be a monster there in the modern game.
I think Sarginson's best position by far is full back (and Hampshire's at 6). Having been brought up playing in Hemel, he simply lacks the instinctive nous to play in as complex a position at centre. He sometimes also gives the impression that he side steps and jinks for the sake of it. He should watch Bowen who can beat players any way he chooses and yet rarely jinks about.
I agree that we chose to take the foot off the pedal once the game was put to bed. Which might be harsh on the younger players, but we stood to gain little from humiliating them. Even the Aussies did this in pretty much all their World cup games bar the first, the semi and final. It is possible for players many classes better to ease back and simply go through the motions.
We have bigger fish to fry and everyone is pretty fresh as we go into the next block of games - to mid June - where we will go full throttle to secure a top 4 spot.
Given that there is only Leeds who can hold a candle to us at full tilt this year, playing them 3 times is handy, as we can pretty much secure that spot if we win the first 2 of those.

[DaveO]

Immediately after the draw, I made 2 preductions. 1) We would not score 100 and 2) Hunslet would not be nilled. The game against North Wales indicated that Wane is not seeking total humiliation over a Championship One team, particularly Hunslet with whom we share a proud memory of an occasion nearly 50 years ago.

For me, the game bore this out. 42-0 after 30 minutes was enough to place the game out of their reach. No way was a team like Hunslet capable of restricting us to 12 points for the next 50 minutes. If you don't believe this, ask Bradford!

Wigan are in the next round without injuries and both teams came away from the game with their dignity intact.

Result!

The only reason we didn't match the Bradford score was our execution in the 2nd half was poor. Not because we didn't want to humiliate Hunslet. Smith passing the ball into touch and the numerous other unforced errors we made were not some kind of choreographed game plan designed to be nice to the opposition.

How do you know?

Because I went to the game and watched the match? The idea we planned to stop scoring so deliberately started dropping the ball, passing it into touch and as a result bombing tries is rather silly.

In any case if we did that would be match fixing. People will have had bets on the score and a deliberate attempt to limit the score could be construed as trying to ensure some bets came in.

[No straw damn us]

For some reason we went from a team in the first half who played some very good rugby to a gang of players in the second half who wanted to show how good they were individually. The whole team thing went by the wayside, why, god only knows and why the coaching team decided to bring Hampshire on so late was baffling. Personally I would have kept Bowen at fullback, taken Smith off and used Hampshire and Williams in the halves. They have played together all their academy career for both Wigan and England so it would have been nice to see how they went at first team level for half a game at least.

[TrueBlueWarrior]

The only reason we didn't match the Bradford score was our execution in the 2nd half was poor. Not because we didn't want to humiliate Hunslet. Smith passing the ball into touch and the numerous other unforced errors we made were not some kind of choreographed game plan designed to be nice to the opposition.

How do you know?

Because I went to the game and watched the match? The idea we planned to stop scoring so deliberately started dropping the ball, passing it into touch and as a result bombing tries is rather silly.

In any case if we did that would be match fixing. People will have had bets on the score and a deliberate attempt to limit the score could be construed as trying to ensure some bets came in.

So nothing to do with Hunslet playing better in the 2nd half and forcing us into errors?