The fighting spirit that we lacked for a while seems to be back this year. Wigan were ferocious in the first 10 or 15 minutes. If that had been us from the last couple of years they would have all but won the game in that period. But we dug really deep and patiently worked our way back into it. Had it not been for a poor error from Fonua we would have seen that period out without conceding (fwiw I thought Fonua bounced back well from that and had a good game).

I think we are finding out some things that we still need to be better at, but he has made massive improvements already. Especially in defence. With a couple of years to keep working with them and to add a few more players of his choosing I feel like Hodgson can do something special with this team. Exciting times.

Exactly.
It was never about the players ability but rather their mentality.
It's not an over night fix but we're heading in the right direction.
It's also great to see our defensive line now move up and slide across instead of the plant your feet, wait for them to come to us we'd become accustomed too over the last few years.

I thought our defensive line went back into Radford mode last night and we just let them run at us far too much. They on the other hand were lightning quick. Yes they was offside a lot but Childs let em and we never tried the same.

We did in the first half when they were pinned in their left corner and got penalised for it straight away. The amount of times you heard Child warn a Wigan player to get their hand off the ball but not give us a set restart was a joke compared to us who he seemed to give a set restart against whenever Hastings waved his arms up and down.

Guess we see different things.
Mental state, conditioning and muscle memory needs rewriting for most of these players after years of playing the Radford way.
Maybe tiredness and fatigue set in towards the end but our attitude never waned.

Hastings and Bateman were both playing the ref with their theatrics.

To be fair I thought we were slow getting into the game in the first 20 mins as opposed to Wigan who were quick out the blocks. I honestly thought other than a few errors our defence was good and we were patient and worked our way in to the game. For all everyone lauds Wigan and how well they've played so far and last night to think the game was in the balance until the last seconds just shows we are a much more together and structured side already in such a short time.

Interesting that even a lot of Wigan fans have said that they got the rub of the green and got a lot of decisions their way. Hopefully in time we will be afforded a more even spread but last night the same as against Wakefield I certainly didn't think we any worse on infringements than the opposition to warrant the differences in set restarts.
There were a couple of things that annoyed me in particular for almost identical infringements where Childs penalised us yet Wigan do the same and all we got was a shout of '6 Again'.

And not forgetting Powell as he must have puppet strings on his arms as every time Wigan are tackled and he's there at the ptb his arms are up and down like crazy pleading to the officials.

Thrilling end to end rugby loads of skill,a great advert for our game,Hope scotts injury isnt too bad,

Very happy with our start to the season, there is a noticeable uplift in intensity and fitness and we are more unpredictable. I never have an issue losing if it's been a tight game and we've given our all, much better than the 'hands on hips after a mistake' stuff we saw from 2018 onwards.