Locker's out

[cpwigan]

You will have to find me where I have criticised Wane in X months. Other posters seem to want to recall post months ago. Personally, I do not think the game plan Wigan employ is the optimum one. I grew up watching clinical coaches (Lowe / Monie) v romantic coaches such as Laughton. The same era that clinical Australia dominated romantic British RL. Otherwise may disagree but I found our lack of competitiveness in the WCC depressing. Remember, clinical Wigan were always capable of beating clinical Australians clubs. Obviously, we lost some too but we won plenty even in the ill fated expanded WCC.

I find it sad when a coach refers to his players as playing 'dumb' when IMO the coaching is 'dumb' Remember what you were promised? Clinical RL did not see teams destroy as well as the new romantic broom would do and this is in an era of declining standards.

You could argue the coach is merely (indeed happy) to work under the financial constraints imposed upon him from the club owner.

The history of Wigan being successful has never been an either / or model; it has been a balance of bought talent (quite often overseas) and some home grown players (worryingly the local junior scene seems on a downward spiral with many of our best juniors brought in (nothing wrong with that) and clubs like Staningley providing the lions share of English Schools Talent. The modern education system killed the halcyon days of amazing Schools RL and many of the local Wigan junior amateur clubs seemed to have slipped too. Ultimately, whatever the era, for every success there are umpteen young boys who never make it and realise their dreams.

The RL hierarchy and professional clubs are predominantly negative and lack aspiration so why on earth should I or anybody else pretend everything is rosey. However, if you want to that is fine and I will simply fit in with the status quo and never utter anything remotely construed as negative and happily clap until the cows come home!

[devon jim 1]

The time you refer back ie Lowe,Monie era when we were the 'Kings of RL',so to speak,I think it is true to say we was one ,if not the only one,of the few full time professional clubs around.So to compare now with then is somewhat invalid.But has PW says lets just move on.

[cpwigan]

Not a problem Jim but remember we were also competitive v full time clubs in a better competition in the then NSWRL.

Led largely by Wigan players we were also the closest ever (a single dummy swallowed) to winning an Ashes v Australia.

I honestly do not believe this utopian romantic superior British RL exists, ever existed. People forget in the halcyon days of 58-62 GB teams we were the clinical hard nosed intelligent RL players.

Personally, I think we are further away not closer to the best in the world and romantic RL ideology is damaging.

If the romantics want to achieve their idea of greateness then they need to change the rules of the sport.

[DaveO]

Groin injury picked up in training according to eddie/stevoe.

Why am I not surprised?

Are they (lockers) training badly, do Wigan have bad trainers or conditioners.
How would you change things based on your comment.

Wane does full contact training all season.

I think you are bound to pick up injuries if this is how you train.

It has not stopped us winning things so far but he's not got the same strength in depth as before and I also don't notice other clubs having such key players pick up injuries training.

Put it this way people post saying why risk Lockers in meaningless games against lowly opposition but it seems more risky training!

[markill]

Wane's Wigan showed they were able to adjust to extended periods of certainty about Lockers being out of the team (and Sam to an extent previously). The playoff run last year was testimony to that. We haven't showed that we can step up and adapt to the loss of our best players at short notice. That is fair to say.

However, it's only conjecture whether we would've won with him on Friday because Leeds were the better side.

My question would be whether Wigan have a different training plan for older players like Lockers, and Bowen, that can help protect them more from injury, like United introduced for likes of Giggs & Ferdinand. We by and large have a young squad. I think the youngest in SL bar London prior to the Jordan James addition. You can't have your few older boys running around with the 21 year olds doing the same stuff surely?