Stu M: I turned off at HT and went on Red Vee to say that Wigan were winning the lot again and that HKR are the only team that can get close to them. Obviously that aged well.
I've said before that I think the pitch will be a huge problem to Wigan and I stand by that. There seemed to be sand in a lot of places and it is not conducive to the style of rugby you play. It makes you wonder if it has impacted on Field doing his hamstring. When you played in Vegas on that 3G style pitch it was like watching it on fast forward.
There's a saying you often hear which I'll paraphrase here: No one can stop Wigan but Wigan themselves and that very much applies in this instance. Without taking anything away from Hull who were excellent in that second half and were good enough to exploit the weaknesses presented to them, I think we could play that game another hundred times and not lose it from the position we were in at half time.
Everything that could be done wrong, we did wrong. The coaching staff, who have been exemplary for almost 2 years, got it wrong following the Field injury and everything snowballed from there. This is not hindsight. I said it at the game. I've posted elsewhere that we ended up with Eckersley, who's not really a winger, Farrell, who's not really a centre (let alone a right sided one!) and a one legged Keighran, who's not really a half all defending alongside each other and being covered by a fullback who hasn't played the position in around a year and, if rumours are to be believed, hadn't trained all week. All because one player went off! I'm not sure we could have got that any more wrong.
You're probably right about the pitch as Barron for Hull also went off with a tight hamstring but regardless of that we should have comfortably seen that game out.
On a positive note though, I'm actually less bothered about this loss than I thought I would be. I said before the season started that another clean sweep wasn't really on the cards. The last 6 trophies on the bounce is a great record but it was never going to be 9. This loss should work in our favour with regards to taking out the Grand Final again and, ultimately, that is the one I think we all want. I'm not saying we'll win it. As we've just seen, anything can happen on the day, but I do believe this ultimately puts us in a stronger position to make it 3 in a row.