We have got the big guns out as far as referees go this week. Robert Hicks is the man in the middle and James Child is our video ref. Interesting!

Its on TV and they will not have to travel to London.

Hicks and Childs- the Laurel and Hardy of SL refs.

They are all clowns.

Shaun O' Loughlin comes on and starts to referee the game, giving his instructions to Robert Hicks.

Not the most entertaining game. We are dogged in our defence but don't seem to have a great deal in attack.

A couple of back row players making 50 + tackles per game doesn't help in attack. Halves don't seem to be able to release the centres.

I suspect the tactic is to play basic rugby to reduce errors to reduce the chance of the 10-15 min lapse we have seen in games where we fall behind and then chase games.

The platform is there.

As for Hicks he did OK. I felt in the second half he came out and was determined to influence the speed of the game. He gave 6 holding down penalties in a very short period after the break 4 against us 2 against the Pies. The officials clearly spoke about that at HT.

I don't think I saw a forward pass last night which is unusual.

Hicks was fine last night, especially when he had O'Loughlin on the pitch to help him with the difficult decisions.

Agree with that assessment Wire-Quin.

Defence was pretty good last night but to win games your attack needs to go up several notches.

Wigan were shambolic last night and would have been taken to the cleaners by most SL teams.

You desperately need 2 cutting edge backs with pace to cause the opposition problems immediately before the teams above you pull further away than the 2pts that separate you from 10th and 11th position.

Seems to be a trend for away games that the opponents don't play well against us but still win.

We should not have lost that game last night, Wigan were as poor as I've seen them.

In defence we were ok, especially in the first half, although we are still a bit undersized. But a couple of uncharacteristic errors from one or two of our most reliable ( usually) players did for us. If only Kear hadn't dropped the ball right into the path of a Wigan player 10 metres out from our line.And I've had put my money on JC taking Dixon's pass and going on to score.

We're not offering much in attack as we don't have a half back with sufficient guile to win the game for us. We had Sammut last year in the Championship, but we have moved up to SL and Hughes has failed to provide sufficient funds for Wardy to bring a comparable replacement in. How much better off would we be points wise if we had been able to sign someone like Hastings at Salford?
Theses games where we have lost by small margins we would surely have won with a Sammut, or a Soward ( first spell) or a McLinden in the side surely?
Don't get me wrong, I think Abdull is OK, and the weighted kick through for Pitts to score was sublime. But we need a top drawer half back - and we need one fast or else all the effort of getting to SL will have been wasted.

Surely Hughes isn't so stubborn as to not learn from his mistakes?
The season he had his hissy fit was when SL got cut to 12 clubs - and he should have spent so we could have had a team with at least half a chance of making the top 12. What did we get? A scenario where almost anyone who turned up on matchday with a pair of boots could have gotten a game!
As rumour has it SL could again be expanded to 14, and if they get Toronto and Toulouse up then who is to say that the RFL might have another try with franchising - and where could that put us? Out in the cold for years!