Agree, it could be a sort of blessing in one way. Keeps Byrne interested / motivated (not that i am saying he isnt)in the early part of the season, and hopefully gives Hill game time too. So when Havard is fit, we'll hopefully have both Byrne and Hill still fit and can rotate them around off the bench

He does indeed. It makes sure everyone is earning a place and not being given freebies anyway.

Sounds a really bad one. Peet has said it's going to be a few months 'at least'

Full match up on Wigan TV already, well done to the club on getting this game up on such a quick turn around!

I watched the full match last night, decent performance for a pre-season. A few hiccups but that's to be expected at this stage.



Wigan were very poor under the high ball, almost every try Wigan scored resulted in Sheffield managing to reach touch from kick-off. That's the significant issue I noticed, we struggled against Leeds with kicks, too. The wind was terrible according to the commentators, causing havoc every time the ball went high.



It was a forward-orientated game, the pitch was very narrow and wingers on both teams couldn't find any space at all. However, this highlighted how good our forwards are. Many of our forwards seem to have shredded some of that puppy fat and gained a few kilos of muscle.

- Walters was outstanding and was the MotM for me, I recall three drives post-contact in which he made an extra 5-10 metres. Very powerful on the edges, and looks to be getting back to his Leeds form.

- Hill was brilliant, he was a handful all night and made lots of metres going forward. He looks to have bulked up a fair bit in the pre-season.

- Byrne was another standout, his try was great. He bulldozed straight over the top of the Sheffield player Joel Farrell, who isn't a small player, to go right near the sticks.

- Mago had a good game and played some long minutes which is nice to see. As usual, takes three players to take him down and always getting a quick play-the-ball.

- Leeming is such a classy player, created the first try of the game with a scoot from dummy-half and a quality kick to set up the opener.

- Tyler Dupree, like Hill, looks like he's shed some weight and bulked up. Victim of an extremely harsh sin-binning for an accidental hair pull on Sheffield's Farrel, whose hair was nearly between his shoulders.



Seriously looking forward to the season now!

Our kick defence has been poor for a couple of years, I think it's our biggest weakness by far. We concede a lot of tries from grubber kicks inside the 10m. Miski and Field are ok at best under the high ball (Field has improved a lot though).