my letter to Wolves is as follows...
Dear Tony Smith when you bother to stop taking the p1ss out of the league and put your strongest team on the field at any one time can you please txt me to let me know....then I can decide whether to attend a game or not with my hard earned cash. Glad I didn't bother today as clearly you and the players aren't.

Mine is

Please can you play our best available 17 every week, even if they are carrying knocks, hopefully so that come playoff time we run out of steam and have a decent excuse for going out without winning the GF

Mine is
Dear mr smith, now that it is obvious that without briers, we are a good team, without Mickey Monas as well, we are very average, can we bring forward, with immediate effect, the signing of Jonathon thurston to partner Gaz o Brien , as it is also obvious that Richie Myler is not our answer.

There were ?, 3 changes to the team, and considering they will have to play 3 games in the space of 9 days, that was a very conservative change of personnel. How on earth you think TS has played a weakened side is beyond me.

Unfortunately we came up against a more determined side with a bigger desire to win & all they had to do was be patient & play basic rugby which is something that we seem unable to play against.

I don't think we played a weakened team but I do think that some players aren't pulling their weight. It's not fair to lay the blame on O'Brien either, as at least he was trying. Some of the senior players, who should step up to the mark, need to seriously think about what they are here for. For long periods today we played one man rugby (again) and I can't see that being in Tony Smith's game plan - it hasn't before.

Also give some credit to Widnes. They were hungrier and worked harder than us today, scoring some excellent tries. Face it, the best team won.

OMG - it's a disaster - 9 games in - 2 points off top of the table - injuries all season to several players - players rested for 3 games in 8 days..................................



When I can manage a trophy-less under achieving team to 3 major cups and a league leaders cup in 4 years - only then will I criticise Tony Smith!!!!

To be fair, with our first choice 17 fit and available it isn't that difficult a task. My concern is when we don't have those 17 we are e and there is no back up plan. Look at the Wigan team today - loads of young lads (average age of the team was 22) and they played superb. That team would have bounced Widnes just like they did last week. Without Briers we are average. Then take out Hodgson and M Monas and we are garbage as shown today. Our back up players outside the first choice 17 are simply not good enough end of story.

You start with 'To be fair' so let's be...

Our 'backup' players are expected to slot in and play as if they've always been there and they haven't. New players need time to bed in and so do players that aren't playing regularly. I wasn't disappointed with our 'backup' players today. I was disappointed in some of the lazy play and lack pf vision by some our more experienced players to be fair!

how does that work then.

Rather than text you, he could just point you to last season when we played weakened teams in loads of games and won the cup and got to the Grand Final.

New players need time to bed in? Only at Warrington.

Wigan, Saints, Leeds put young lads in at will and they look like they have played every week.

Who are we counting as back up players?

I assume people just mean O'Brien and Evans who have each played 20 odd first team games so nearly a full season under their belts, plus Currie (who was on the bench today) has had about half a season under his belt in terms of SL appearances.

But anyway three young players in a 17 is not really unusual for Super League. Also these are the three players that we regard as the cream of our upcoming talent.

The rest of the team was Ratchford, Riley, Atkins, J Monaghan, Myler, Carvell, Higham, Hill, Grix, Westwood, Cooper, Waterhouse, Harrison, Wood.

Which ones of those do we not count as first teamers? If we're trying to count Higham, Grix and Cooper as second string then we're scraping the barrel of that argument I think.

We aren't seeing inconsistent results this year because Tony Smith is selecting weakened squads and underestimating the opposition. We are probably seeing that there is a huge difference when you take out these four players:

Briers
Hodgson
Michael Monaghan
Morley

Unfortunately as all of them are coming to the ends of their careers, what we are also seeing is a vision into the future of the next couple of seasons.

The team line up we saw today is the sort people post on here as their "Warrington 2015" teams (minus Waterhouse, Wood etc) along with comments like "the future is bright". I am always criticised for being negative, but I still think this "future's bright" team is a decent upper mid table team not Grand Final winners potential team. It will need about 4 top class signings, which hopefully we will secure with the salary cap freed up by the retiring big guns.