Finish top and we avoid Hull KR and Warrington until OT and for me these 3 are well ahead of the rest, although Leigh are coming on strong.

The play offs (as per previous season and I’m almost 100% this season) are:

3rd-6th
4th-5th

1st- lowest finishing winner of preliminary semis
2nd- highest finishing winner of preliminary semis

Winner-Winner at OT

Both sides will come out of that feeling confident.

Wigan were utterly ruthless and showed how to target an edge and also to exploit playing against 12 men.

French’s try was sensational and you simply can’t plan to defend that. Nsemba is just a monster and it’s frightening to think of how good he could be when he’s only 20.

Conversely HKR were 15 mins away from winning and arguably would’ve done without the yellow cards. Literally every try was scored when they were down a man.

They’ll still feel confident they can beat Wigan home or away. Losing Evalds pre match was a blow too.

Was frustrating to watch the attacking quality on show when you support a team whose attack consists of 5 drives and a kick, a drop off pass or give it to Welsby and hope he can do something

Looking around on social media, it's a shame the main feeling coming out seems to be that Wigan were somehow totally reliant on the refs calls to win the game. We bust them open all game and they scrambled unbelievably well to hold out. It finished 9 clean breaks to 2 and 5 tries to 3. We lost the penalty count again and HKR get 2 yellow cards that are hardly controversial by today's standards.

Now that's out the way, it was a pleasure to be at the game. The atmosphere electric and the game absolutely superb. Some performances on both sides were outstanding. Fair play to Paddy Mago, I wondered if he may lose his place before the end of the season and he produces that! Superb.

Great game even at 20-8 down didn’t feel like either side was done. Only saving grace for me we was cutting through them for fun at stages but struggled at time break them on their line and kr was opposite. Hopefully put this down to the banned/injured players being reintroduced. Ellis looked dangerous tonight really held up down the middle. Mago was introduced and cause havoc. Both cards were warranted and I do thing kalepi should have gone think his saving grace was there was only 12 on the field at the time

It literally wasn't though, French's try was against 13 men, for all their supposed dominance the only try KR scored in the second half once wigan cleaned up their errors and discipline was a 100m interception.

That’s the most sensible post I have read for a long time. If we control the l ball then we are going to be a very difficult team to beat. Our forwards dominated HKR tonight, it was the gifting of field position that nearly resulted in our downfall. Like all champion teams we found a way to win. HKR made very few errors and conceded few penalties, although the ones they did were crucial. Budgies was unforgivable. Personally, I would have given our first half performance a C rating and our second half a B. Our combinations will get much better over the next few weeks. HKR have a very difficult game at Leigh next week now taken a lot of petrol out of their tank.

I thought our attack looked rusty and our kicking game was poor. If we fix those issues and control the ball it is going to take an exceptional team to beat us. The most frustrating thing for me was Lewis’s step inside French that would have been flagged all week.

I agree mate, Byrne and Vaughan must have been wondering if the rules had changed. I think he will be sat on the sidelines next week.

To add to the game statistically, we made over 300 metres more than HKR as well. Journos like Aaron Bower are throwing lines around that Wigan needed the yellows to get the win and we possibly did but it felt pretty staggering at the game that we were 20-8 down. It was never a 20-8 game and we'd been our own worse enemy to get in that position but we kept making the breaks and eventually it told. The fact the first yellow comes from a professional foul on a long range Wigan break sort of summed up the game flow and how HKR were hanging in. To go 12 points up in a game your scrambling so much in was a credit to them but it's galling that a narrative is being thrown around that the better side lost, they really didn't!

Rovers had us on the ropes late first half and early second half but decided to convert penalties, said it then that it might come back to bite them and it did.