Guardian Fan Panel on Warrington Wolves' Challenge Cup exit

Plenty of anger has been directed at the team, head coach Daryl Powell and those above since 12-man Wigan Warriors dumped them out in the quarter-final stages on Sunday.

Here's what three members of our Guardian Fan Panel have had to say about the game...

MARK GRAHAM

Shocking. Abysmal. Shambolic. Panicked. Embarrassing.

All words we can use quite accurately to describe Sunday’s performance at Wigan – or rather lack of performance.

To win a game, regardless of who it is against, you have to be prepared to do the hard work and yesterday our players didn’t appear to believe that to be the case, especially when Ellis was sent off.

We badly missed a leader out there, a ‘Moz’ who would roll their sleeves up and drive extra hard into the heart of the battle, dragging his teammates along with him, or a Briers who would take control of the game, get us on the front foot gradually without trying to score off every possession.

For the second game in a row, we were taught a lesson in game management by Wigan’s Harry Smith…

Were there positives? Well without Josh Thewlis’ efforts, Wigan would have been out of sight by half time. Josh himself is developing into a very fine winger in attack and defence.

We managed to keep the twin threat of French & Field relatively quiet. And that’s about it.

Make no bones about it, Sunday’s prime-time humiliation was unacceptable. We the fans know it, the players know it, the coaching staff and the board all know it.

We aren’t stupid enough to expect to win every game we play in but we want to compete, to know that the players are using their brains as well as their bodies, to trust that plans and preparations aren’t forgotten about the minute the players cross the whitewash.

We lost this the game between our ears and behind our chests – and that’s what hurts the most.

Supporting a sports team is like a marriage – you are there for each other in the good times and the bad. For richer and poorer, better and worse you promise.

We are in the poor, the worse at the moment. But we stick with each other, we work things out and keep at it.

We go to Cas on Friday with the chance to get back on the horse. Warrington Wolves, it’s over to you…

CHRIS MCKEAN

That result didn't come as a surprise to me as the signs have been there for a month or so, but the manner of defeat surprised and disappointed me.

I can't think of many games in the last 3-4 years where we have played that badly. I think we finished on around 17 errors – 17!

Let’s not take anything away from Wigan – they were a man down for 74 minutes and you wouldn't have known it.

Their line speed stifled our go-forward and what did we do when they had the ball?  Sat back and waited for them to come to us.

Once again Peanut offered nothing at halfback. I'd have Dufty there when attacking and at FB when defending.

On 66 minutes, George Williams kicked through for Joe Philbin. Kicking through on the fourth tackle for a prop forward to get on the end of it smacks of desperation and this is what happens when Williams doesn't have a decent halfback partner.

I thought Thewlis, Bullock and Harrison can hold their heads up high. They played well.

After the last match, I referenced us being just like the Steve Price era. I'm more convinced of this every week – I can see us scraping in the playoffs and going out in the first round.

RAY TICKLE

I honestly don’t know where to start with what was dished up by Wire at the DW stadium.

So I’ll start with the obvious and head to minute six and the sending off. It definitely affected Wire more than it did Wigan. I genuinely think that we just thought it was game over and that the win will just come naturally.

From that point on, we played some of the dumbest rugby that I’ve seen from Wire for a long time – it was total panic rugby.

This was seasoned and international players who lost their heads in a situation that was basically a massive advantage to them.

In total, we made i think 15 errors – that’s just ridiculous in conditions that were perfect in terms of ball handling.

“Coach killer” is how I would describe it and not a thing the coach could do about it.

Both Wigan tries followed errors by Wire players, which comes as no surprise as there was that many.

The second half saw slight improvement and a couple of tries, but still massively below standards and the 12 men were in determined mood.

With two minutes left on the clock, it looked like Wire had pinched an undeserved win by shifting the ball to the right and Josh Thewlis getting over for a touchdown only for it to be ruled out for a forward pass by the Wire fans’ favourite scapegoat and Wigan closed the game out from there.

So we go onto Cas next week following on from what I think is our worst performance of the season so far due to the circumstances of the game.

Can we go and turn Cas over? Yes of course we can, but if we repeat Sunday’s performance with error after unforced error, my fan panel  iews next week might be a brutally honest, harsh Q&A for the players…