Andy Gilder wrote:
Wigan's recruitment in the front-row over the last few years has been a parade of mediocrity - Pettybourne, Flower, Dudson, Clubb, Mossop, Tautai.
And yet they've still managed to be competitive for the big prizes, because they play within a system both in attack and defence which doesn't ask those players to do more than truck it in, find the ground and hit anything that runs in their general direction. Credit for that goes to a much maligned coach. He's got a forward pack which is much better collectively than the sum of its parts.
Said in pre-season that Wigan really lack a 'main guy' prop along the lines of Hill or Walmsley or what we had with Peacock. I can't remember the exact figures but combined their props had something like 9/10 100m+ games between them last year. The likes of those mentioned above had over 20 with decent totals too for the likes of Cuthbertson, Sims and Amor.
The counter argument is that it's not their style to have the props do too much work in attack and it's more on the 2nd rows and centres but only 8 carries each from their starting props in the GF when our middle was knackered was really bad tactically. Their away form was really poor last year, again is that because away from home you should be looking at being more direct and basic instead of trying to go to your edges too often.
Their style might be successful in terms of being up there and in the mix but not having that option or flexibility depending on circumstances (weather conditions, opponents, scoreline) is a key reason why they've been trophy less in the last two seasons imo.
