He did claim that the players that missed out against Widnes were carrying injuries which is why he rested them. That could have been an attempt to save himself from the criticism coming his way but in subsequent weeks O'Loughlin, Farrell, Leuluai and Richards ended up missing games through injury. So potentially the players who missed out were carrying knocks and they could have been the victims of whatever has caused so many players to pick up knocks throughout the year and particularly towards the end of the year; some might suggest it was pushing players too hard in training.

People are happy to lose games. Happy to finish lower down the league. There are serious problems within out sport but no more so than having a 27 week competition where the games don't matter. People talk about P&R, internationals, adminstartion etc but i cannot believe the RFL cannot see people are stopping going to the regular seaosn games because they are meaningless. This, IMO is a major problem.

Wane rests players and gets beat. Folk complain. Wane doesn't rest players and finishes top then misses out on final by a point. Folk complain that we didn't 'build to the business end of the season'... or rather 'lose more games'. Don't get it. When I go to a game I want to be entertained and preferably win. I just don't get how it is possible to send a team out to be mediocre for part of the season on purpose. I don't think Leeds have done it by design, just by being poor most of the time. Simple as that. Then having good experienced players to save them when it counts. Really don't think it was coached that way but what do I know? Would be such a shame if we specifically aimed to under-perform for certain parts of the year. Or am I misunderstanding how to 'build a season'? Ok wire rotated and it worked this year. That's one year. I don't see NRL teams being poor all year then playing well at playoff time. Surely the aim is to be the best all the time, INCLUDING playoffs?

And as for rotating players, well I think we have. Not necessarily on purpose but as a result of loss of form or injury. Would be interesting to know how many players played first team for Wigan and wire this year. Suppose it's better to manage it than have it forced upon you but that isn't always possible and is a very tricky thing to get right unless you get lucky with injuries. As mentioned by other posters, the issue of intense training may have an impact but we just don't know for sure. I for one am willing to crack on and give this philosophy a chance... not that my opinion matters! One year doesn't prove anything. Don't want to get back into those years of chopping and changing and knee-jurk reactions. Choose a path and stick with it for at least 3 years, unless it really is a disaster which this isn't!

I think it is evident that certain posters have had it in for Wane since day 1 and some didnt even want him to be appointed in the first place. He is damned if he does and damned if he doesnt with these posters and they will not be happy until he loses his job.



Against Widnes we were winning comfortably twice and should have easily won the game. The players let Wane down, as well as themselves, and conceeded 37 points. Also there is a fair degree of exageration as to how many players were rested with some in fact injured.



Against Bradford we didnt even rest that many players and again was winning until McIlorum was foolishly sent off. Again how was this Wane's fault? If McIlorum hadnt have reacted foolishly then we would have won.



If Wane rests players he is criticised, if he doesnt he is criticised. The posters that are calling for people to be rested will be the first ones to complain when we lose games as a result. Posters that are complaining we didnt rest enough players this season were blaming Wane after the first game for not playing enough friendly games and thus making the players play even more. Then you have posters complaining that he rested players too early and not late enough in the season. This is despite it being fairly obvious what the benefits of any rest will be, even early in the season, and ignoring that this is exactly what Smith did and what Football managers do on a regular basis from the start of a season. When we play poorly it is all Wanes fault, never the players, and when we play well it is down to Iestyn Harris as attack coach. When we look fit it is down to Bitcom, when we look unfit it is because of Wane and his training methods. Some seem to have formed an opinion of Wane at the start of the season, for whatever reasons that may be, and have then proceeded to spend the entire season looking for reasons to justify this opinion.

That is the problem with SL atm finishing top 5 is now good enough to win the GF. But we are not the only sport to be like this many do it now where finishing top does not guarantee your the champions. Rightly or wrongly this is the system we have and it needs a change but the play offs brings in a lot of money into the the game. Attendances are poor but that will be made up by Sky money so no one will push for a change from most of the SL clubs.



But this is the issue as long as attendances on a week to week basis go up and tv ratings are up. How can we perceive SL as a failure and that is the argument that will stand up against any change in the present format. Sky wants it Sky gets it. And i do not see any other network willing to pump in the money sky does.

It wasn't coached that way. McDermott was clearly appalled and furious at some of our play this year. In fact much of the criticism of McDermott has related to him not resting or dropping senior players sufficiently often. If fifth was the aim, why on earth would he risk injury or burn out by playing them?



In some respects I feel sorry for Wane. By being successful in the regular season he lifted expectations only to cop the vitriol when things, unluckily in my book, went a bit tits up. Contrast this with McDermott's first season in which our league form was so crap that nobody was left with any expectations whatsoever only for things to fall into place at the season's end. Of course it could be argued that both are crap coaches but at the end of the day the only other coach who might not envy both their successes is Tony Smith.

We used 32, don't know about Wire.

Making four unforced changes for a game is wrong in itself whether the ref cost us the game or not.



I could equally say with a more experienced side we would have still beaten Bradford with 12 men but that is not the point.



There is a right way to rotate players and a wrong way and Wane got it wrong twice regardless of the results (though those results proved significant meaning he could not rest players later in order to win the league). I do not believe for one minute as was suggested we had six injuries that required all those changes v Widnes for example. And what is the point of playing a young player once like Murphy and then chucking him in the deep end in semi-final?



If there are some young players knocking on the door as Murphy is you need to give them more games and there was plenty of opportunity for that where making one change to allow this would not have taken the shape right out of the side.



We went from one extreme where Madge played his 1st 17 every week to the other where when Wane did make changes he made 6 then 4 changes.



I have absolutely no doubt Wane thought even with these the side would still win but most everyone else didn't without the benefit of hindsight. Ditto it being a good idea to play Murphy in the semi final after giving him one SL game all season.

Agree with DaveO about rotating and there being a right way and a wrong way. As for Bradford I have always thought that the defeat was down to Roby. Once we went down to 12 Bradford changed the way they played anyway.



Wane made mistakes enough at Widnes by resting players but that was compounded by losing players through injury during the game. Mossop went off after 30 mins didn't come back and missed the next two or three matches.

Goulding got concussed by hitting heads with (Hansen I think). Goulding was taken off not to return. Hock then came out of the pack to play right centre.



The trouble always is if you rest so many that there is a risk of losing more experience from the field with inuries as we did at Widnes.

I didnt want him to get the job as I thought it was at least a year too early for him and I stand by that. Our attack first half of the season was great and he of course should get credit for that, and to be honest in most games the defense was pretty solid too.



However in reality he has won a one horse race as we can all agree that only he has taken the league seriously, and infact has lost every big game of the season.

Saints away and saints cc quarter final? I'd also suggest that many teams took the league seriously but just weren't good enough. Do teams really go into games happy to lose? Peaking at the right end of the season is just an excuse for being crap earlier on IMO.