Conceded in a week against arguably the two weakest teams in the comp and Wane has no one to blame but himself due to the unnecessary large number of changes made in both games. The team seems to have lost the cohesion and momentum (especially defensively) that was building because of 6/7 changes being made for each of the last two games. Mellor, Russell etc could still have played in one of these two games by managing the situation better.

Lets hope we sort it out in time for Friday.

He managed it poorly but yesterday to be honest I think we had one eye on Friday, as I suspect Warrington did also in how their result looked against Wakefield.

Considering we only conceded 58 points in our first 5 games playing some really tough fixtures I think it is really poor.

If we could keep up that defencive record of conceding 12 points every game, we would be the hardest team to beat. We will score more than 12 against most teams.

Disappointing that we were caught out behind the ruck on a number of occasions.



We're just not as mean in defense at present as we were before. We look to be lacking energy as well, then again yesterday's Cathedral like atmosphere tuck out of me, all my enthusiasm for the match was sapped in no time.

I'm not to concerned because for the minutes where we do concentrate and give our all, then defensively we look very good. It comes back to not playing for the full eighty, which something we are yet again struggling to do.

As has been said, the main problem in defence yesterday was Wigan being caught out at the ruck. If memory serves they scored twice off that. It's something that needs addressing but I'm confident it'll come with match practice and a more settled side. A Wigan team shouldn't be conceding 30 points against any club in the world.

The worry for me from the tries conceded is that the breaks seem to be up the middle.

Every team gets caught out wide at times, but we've been too soft in the centre of the defensive line for my liking the past 2 games.

That said, I expect we'll see a vastly improved effort on Friday

Have to agree there. We were worried about the right hand side at the start of the season, and Goulding and Charnley have been really solid together in my opinion. I suspect we'll see the lads rise to the occasion on Friday though. The atmosphere will be electric and if that doesn't get them going then nothing will.

I think we will too, but you're right - there were some one-on-one shockers in the middle. The sort of defensive lapses that players ought to spend time on the sidelines for.

Completely agree. All down to a pointless disruption by the coach. He could have given a couple of young players a run in either game and kept the side on song but it looked like back to square 1 v Hudds at times.

Agreed - still struggling to get my head around how Wane could have been so daft.

That's correct, we've been weak around the ruck several times, particularly against Huddersfield in the opening game and for me it's because of the change in defensive tactics. We aren't holding the players up and allowing the defence to get back so there's always room to exploit.

As much as people are blaming last weeks team selection for the issues it was McIlorum and Flower who were the main culprits and both played against Widnes and both are professional players who shouldn't be making those mistakes no matter what stage of the season or how many changes get made the previous week.

If a team can't play after having a week off (even though it was only 5 changes but I'll humour those who blame Wane's selection) then that's an issue with the players, not the coach. They should be more than capable of playing with players they are very familiar with at any stage of the season no matter how many games they miss. Carmont has missed about 4 games and yet fit back into the system with ease.

Of course the most worrying aspect for me is the fact that the forwards were dominated. Our pack was hardly making any impact down the middle and so field position was harder to come by.

While London seem to be considered as weak they have an attacking quartet of Randall, Gower, Witt and Dorn who are incredibly smart players and are able to create real problems when given opportunities.

Without Mossop our pack seem very ineffective and only Lima and O'Loughlin made the metres you'd expect of them.

Some of the missed tackles that lead to London tries were appalling, especially the Lockers and McIlorum miss for London's second (two of our strongest defenders) and Flower on Gower in the 2nd half.