sergeant pepper wrote:It's a good job that 75% figure isn't right then.. https://www.superleague.co.uk/match-centre/report/3779 Havard - Tackles (TK) 16 - Missed Tackles (MI) 1, which is 6%. Surely you don't actually believe what you post? King supposedly had a good game, but yet he missed 20% of his tackles & of which two led to points against us. Wardle was apparently anonymous, but only missed one and made just 4 metres less than King off half the amount of carries and doubled his average again. Havard missed 6% of his tackles, Ellis missed 12%. Havard made more than double the amount of yards as him too. I read the table wrong and you are correct it was only 1 miss. I wrongly took MT to be missed tackles not marker tackles. You have to take stats in the context of the actual game. Most of Wardell yards came off the back of his try which was a clear run to the line. I do wonder if you understand the game, particularly the way Wigan play. Wigan have not relied on props to make meters in a long time, since pre Wane days. We rely on our outside backs, centres and secondrows to make meters. Our props are there to win the physicality arm wrestle in the middle. They failed on Saturday to to this and given the time Havard was on his work rate is still quite low. This skews his stats in that department. His stats highlighted a low work rate.

sergeant pepper wrote:It's a good job that 75% figure isn't right then.. https://www.superleague.co.uk/match-centre/report/3779 Havard - Tackles (TK) 16 - Missed Tackles (MI) 1, which is 6%. Surely you don't actually believe what you post? King supposedly had a good game, but yet he missed 20% of his tackles & of which two led to points against us. Wardle was apparently anonymous, but only missed one and made just 4 metres less than King off half the amount of carries and doubled his average again. Havard missed 6% of his tackles, Ellis missed 12%. Havard made more than double the amount of yards as him too. I read the table wrong and you are correct it was only 1 miss. I wrongly took MT to be missed tackles not marker tackles. You have to take stats in the context of the actual game. Most of Wardell yards came off the back of his try which was a clear run to the line. I do wonder if you understand the game, particularly the way Wigan play. Wigan have not relied on props to make meters in a long time, since pre Wane days. We rely on our outside backs, centres and secondrows to make meters. Our props are there to win the physicality arm wrestle in the middle. They failed on Saturday to to this and given the time Havard was on his work rate is still quite low. This skews his stats in that department. His stats highlighted a low work rate.

I just want to see more aggression and intensity going in to our defence. That actually might mean missed tackles go up but that isn’t always a bad thing. We were too passive with and without the ball, certainly around the middle. I can’t say it’s not a worry that we look generally shy on aggression in that pack now and that may need fixing at some point in the season.

I presume Jon that the players had a “tough” pre season and the camp agreed their objectives behind closed doors for the season?

Obviously it’s only one game but the lack of aggression, urgency and discipline was pretty startling. I accept that with two new centres and potentially some new defensive routines we aren’t going to be firing on full cylinders but I’d expect us to able to get out of second gear and at least have our foot on the accelerator trying to dictate the game.
I don’t like losing but accept it if we’ve done our best.
I expect that every game all players have given their best. On Saturday not one player stood out which was quite worrying.
I’m not panicking but bitterly disappointed with another no show in an away match.

Let's take what you say at face value (even tho I don't agree).

Swapping Havard for Mago, like you suggest, will change us how? He's hardly going to improve things is he?

Absolutely, and as we said last week it makes sense to start Isa and use KPP almost as an impact sub.

For some reason it’s not allowing me to quote in response SP however this is in direct response to the post above re picking Mago.

I’d like to know what bit you don’t agree with.

Just an example regards Wardle his try scoring run was circa 45 meters, a gain he didn’t have to beat anyone on or engage contact. Removing that run his work rate for the 80 was 65 meters off 7 carries.

We have for over 10 years played where our style is wingers, centres and second rows are our go forward.

When it is your job to carry 7 isn’t enough. If you post on here you may know I’ve links to Wardle he’s a top class centre and I’ve championed him for a long time as a Wigan signing (think it was me that confirmed it around the time he made his England debut mid season) but that isn’t enough….and he knows it.

I never claimed King had a good game, I did say he was out most effective back and the stats back that up. Yes obviously he made the error for the SKD try by getting his read wrong and taking the lead runner. I didn’t see his other miss which led to a try (care to enlighten me) I did see his excellent try saving effort.

I picked Havard out because I incorrectly read he missed 5 tackles. That was the main factor in that.

I’m not sure how long he was on the field for but he seemed to have decent game time certainly compared to some of the other middles yet he competed only 16 tackles. Ellis was next lowest with 17 and he hardly seemed to be on the field.

Singleton 21, Cooper 23, Smithies 40, Byrne 23. That tells me of the middles he had the lowest work rate in defence despite playing what I felt was significant minutes.

In answer to your question I felt given it is our props job to do the tough defensive work that he was least effective in this roll. He seemed to lose collisions too.

In reality could argue that they could drop any for Mago though.

Why bring Mago in?…because it would send a message to say failure to perform means you lose your spot in an area in which we are pretty congested. It highlights competition for places and says if you don’t hit certain levels someone else gets a shot.

Personally I also think that our Prop rotation is a bit bland, in that they all tend to be very similar. Mago brings something different in short spells more impact and ability to offload. He has lost his place because he isn’t the grafter in defence but I feel he can be accommodated for short effective spells because others are capable of playing longer minutes.

Team selection is fluid, not everything is black and white as you seem to think it is. I’m not saying Havard (or anyone) misses out for the rest of the season I just personally believe if players underperform when other proven players are waiting in the wings for a shot…then they have a week off or until they can fight there way back into the team, which invariably they do.

The only counter to this that I would offer, Jon, is that Havard is the one true metre maker among our props and also has the most potential to improve. Shouldn't he be given the chance to put right a poor display? Singleton is Singleton. It wasn't a sub par performance from him; just his normal standard. There's little improvement in him either so maybe dropping him for Mago would make more sense in my opinion.

Agree with this, McIlorum missed double figure tackles on Friday but having watched him for 15 years, I assume he was flying out of the line, aggressively causing big disruption on the ball carriers.

Morgan Knowles is the same, always high on missed tackles but when you meet the ball carrier after the 2/3 metres you can miss the tackle so long as your team mates finish the tackle after 5metres.

He was and also consistently a few yards offside to the frustration of fans repeatedly went unpenalised. At one point the first receiver got a pass and Mccollorum had practically run past him he was that offside lol. It’s certainly disruptive of the officials aren’t having a keen day on offsides.

These kind of missed tackles as said don’t lead to line breaks though usually.

I think it’s a fair shout, my only counter is as I said above. Our props are not set out with the game plan to make meters. That is the job of the outside backs, centre and secondrow in our game plan. Our props are more used with the ball to get to certain points on the field and get a quick PTB to set up a play.

Despite being on the field maybe the longest of all the Props he had the lowest tackle count, and he also seemed to lose collisions in defence more than the others. That’s my only reason for saying he may need to be sat down because he didn’t achieve what our game plan sets out to achieve.

I really rate Havard, I think he may well be our best Prop when we look back at the end of the season but last week he was the least successful at preventing the roll by KR, the reality is all we’re poor.