Wigan in 2023 got off to a slow start, losing 2 of the opening 6 games. They hit 1st place in April 2023, then had a slump for a month mid May-Mid June falling to 6th. Then they won 11 our of 12 to finish the season in first place.

If we can win 75% of our games (3 out of 4) we will win the LLS.

If we only win 50% of our games (2 out of 4) we will make the playoffs, win 3 games on the bounce at the end and we win the SL title. It's really as simple as that.

Believe it or not in 2023 we were just 6 wins from the LLS.

Instead we lost these 6 games, which I consider winnable.

Wakefield (A)
Salford (A)
Hull FC (Magic)
Castleford (A)
Leeds (H)
Catalan (H)


*I have no idea why any of our players in our squad should feel any hype and be over confident at all. The long termers have an established track record of being pretty average performance wise, and downright weak mentally . I remember Philbin remarking in the WG "perhaps we have underachieved during my time" - no poop Sherlock - 1 pot out of a possible 20 during his stint. Maybe if we linked testimonials with performance, and not longevity, we would see a different result.

So when do we play Penrith behind closed doors? For some reason I assumed this would be a run out for us before playing Cats, but obviously this can’t be the case. Are we playing them mid-next week without full contact?

So, 6th game against Cats after the cup, and potentially could be top of the league.

Thoughts on Burgess so far? Anyone not surprised?

If you listened to media talk, it would sound like we're 0 from 4, rather than 4 from 5, we're quietly flying under the radar, and I'm alright with that for now

Top of the league now.
Unfortunately we’ve a long wait before we can test ourselves against the Pies.

Good solid start for Wire and signs of green shoots of recovery. We are not title contenders but looking at the league I am confident we should make a play off place.

Not getting giddy, but happy with what I’ve seen so far, which is basically the team progressing and youngsters being given a chance.

As Wires71 pointed out above if we had beaten the "weaker" teams we would have been league leaders.

That's my expectations of a season we beat the teams we are supposed to beat and we put in the effort in the "big" teams games giving us a chance to win.

That's the beauty/beast of the GF format you don't have to be the best/most consistently best to win just win the big games.

I think play offs is the minimum expectation each season and we should always have a team and coaching staff able to win it.