: Tue Mar 17, 2009 12:54 am
I was at the game due to a quick visit to Blighty for personal reasons. FWIW here are my views on the first live game I've seen for over 5 years...
Re the centres, to me Gibson looked pretty accomplished. To suggest he missed a lot of tackles seems a bit OTT. Wigan's basic tactic down that side was to run Hock straight at Gibson, and whilst he didn't knock him over every time, from what I saw he stopped Hock in his tracks fairly consistently - I'm sure a lot of forwards would have had the same result at best. He also looked positionally OK, and a genuine centre. Watkins made a few errors but looked physically the part. Hopefully he'll come on as he gets more experienced.
Hall looked reasonable. Smith looked good when he actually caught the ball and took it up, but did seem a bit loathe to attack kicks that were short. He does look much too small to be a centre nowadays though.
OK here's a controversial bit. To me Leeds often looked unstructured near the opposition line - Wigan looked more organised - and part of the problem for both centres (perhaps because they're new?) is that Leeds' attacking game didn't bring them into the game consistently well. Was this also due to no specialist hooker?
Of the Leeds forwards, was most impressed by Ablett, who looked much better than I expected and Kirke. However if - huge word I know - Hock could cut out the errors he'd be far and away the best forward on the park.
I'd also add that the scoreline probably flattered Leeds as Wigan made so many bad errors in that first half it was almost laughable.
All in all a good experience. Please don't ask for comparisons to the NRL.
was the league express mate.
