I remember having a quick chat with Shaun McRae at Etihad last season about a certain Super League match from years gone by, and it posed the question - what is your favourite game in which Wire lost, as crazy a question as that may seem?



Now before you jump all over me for it, I'm asking this question based on the idea that even as a bias supporter, you can appreciate any match, win or lose, as a sporting spectacle. I cast my mind back to that heartbreaking loss to Saints in 2005 at HJ in the snow. Devastation clouded the entire town, but what a good old fashioned game that was in those conditions. Or how about heading off to Wigan for the 2003 playoff? We had as much hope of winning there as Andy Fordham does of back stroking the Atlantic. Yet we almost pulled it off and still sang into the night as if we had.



Personally, however, mine would be the 1996 home loss to Saints 24 - 25. I was a ball boy and can remember a fresh faced Steve Prescott doing one of his trademark full back leaps to catch a Willie Swann bomb. He then pierced his way through the defence and tore his way down the right hand wing, it looked like he was heading straight towards me as I sat pitch side. Lee Penny chased and chased with everything he had and somehow cut him down with an absolutely textbook tackle round the ankles. Both full backs hit the ground only 2 feet from me and my mate who also a ball boy. The ground shook it was that good a tackle. Ball went from Martyn through Saints hands before Perrelini flicked a blind pass straight into Roper's hands. With blood streaming down his lower face, and with a knackered Steve Prescott on his tail, he ran 70 metres to score and force the roof of the Fletcher End right into the sky .......



Ok we lost, but some of the tries, tackles and even Bobbie Goulding's decision to take the two points from a penalty when they were 7 points down to give them a converted try winning chance if possible, all made for a great game of rugby league.



There are probably some I've missed, but woke up in a reflective mood today.



To all those at the game today, enjoy the day!

Malloy was dropped.

He never played for us again.

It was Malloy who slipped the pass out in the final minute for Bob Jackson to pop on to like he was a centre.

The pass that beat Oldham and sent us to Wembley.

dont have a favourite loss and never will...but a moment that will live with me forever in defeat was that so and so joe lydon with his drop goal at maine road..

That 89 team, had we have avoided the pies in the semi, would have beaten them in the final and so changed history. There would never had been the pie dominance that followed.