Player Retention

[shaunedwardsfanclub]

We invest a great deal of money on recruiting junior players and developing them, it is time the club stopped looking to cash in. We need to retain our home grown players long-term if we are to progress as a club. This should start with Gilly and Budgie and progress to the likes of Smithies and Byrne. We need to stop recruiting players to fill gaps in the short-term and instead look to develop a team over a five to ten year period.

I find it annoying that we now find ourselves in the lower echelons of the league when with the right retention strategy we should have been challenging for honours. Players need to be paid to achieve and not be rewarded just because they are good club men. We have lost excellent players like Tomkins, Bateman and Sutton yet retained others, on better salaries, who are simply mediocre.

[lucky 13]

That's all OK if they want to stay here.. At one time Aus seemed a long way away our cap was better and the pound worth more.
Now you have quite a few England players down there, the big bucks and lifestyle must be very tempting.
Running a youth set up like ours is great but running alongside a devalued cap and an NRL with much more to offer makes retention difficult, I still think the Wigan name carries weight down under and since the cap fell greatly behind the NRL we have been the most sucsessfull side and have been targeted. I dont know how that changes under these circumstances next few years.
I know people will quote Leeds and Saints but Leeds had sucsess while we was at a more level playing field cap wise and Saints to this point have not been winning so lower profile. I could only see Walmsley, Thompson and Makinson being wanted from Saints by NRL at the momment . Circymstances also play a role, you always get ones who will stay like Walmsley having a kid example look at Taylor going back to Hull, also look at players returning here.
I think we need to accept we may need to release more players to free more money within the playing structure for marquee .
The first team wage was over 2m with SamT and Williams but our overall spend was over 4.5m. Great young players who dont make the step may gave to be released sooner so we can take up the two maybe 3 marquee spots. Odd one may come back and haunt us but it's going to be needed.

[DaveO]

We invest a great deal of money on recruiting junior players and developing them, it is time the club stopped looking to cash in. We need to retain our home grown players long-term if we are to progress as a club. This should start with Gilly and Budgie and progress to the likes of Smithies and Byrne. We need to stop recruiting players to fill gaps in the short-term and instead look to develop a team over a five to ten year period.

I find it annoying that we now find ourselves in the lower echelons of the league when with the right retention strategy we should have been challenging for honours. Players need to be paid to achieve and not be rewarded just because they are good club men. We have lost excellent players like Tomkins, Bateman and Sutton yet retained others, on better salaries, who are simply mediocre.

I agree. In particular we seem to have let excellent players leave and have not just not replaced them with similar quality but have ended up with a wage bill still at the full cap level. You’d have thought we’d have a considerably reduced wage bill if nothing else. It seems we are prepared to pay top wages to mediocre players.

As to retaining players we produce I think the only thing you can realistically do is hold them to contracts and then let them go for free at the end of their deal if that is what they want. We just can’t compete on wages but there is no reason to let them leave early.

How you are supposed to plan long term when you don’t know if players on 3 or 4 year deals are going to be here next season never mind for the next three seasons I have no idea.

Of course to hold players to deals and forgo a fee at the end of their deal presumes the club can afford to do this. Under IL I don’t think it can.

You also have to ask if given the clubs financial inability and/or unwillingness to hold players to their contract is having a production line worth it at all? All we are doing is producing players to sell. It’s as if this is the clubs business model. If so it’s one that annoys the fans with our best players leaving early to raise cash.

What I think fans would prefer is the club being able to afford not to have to sell any player but that would probably require more cash input from IL directly or bigger sponsorship deals.

With the old regime under Maurice Lindsay it was often said Wigan relied on getting to Wembley every year to raise cash Under IL it’s as if we rely on selling a top player every year.