Chairman Doris

[DaveO]

Martin Taylor posted:
When Jack Robinson was at Wigan he did most of the sighnings, and they were good. When he left and Doris did that job we ended up with players like Florimo, Clinch, Reeber etc...
.

Haven't you got that the wrong way around? It was after Mo left the signings started to be rubbish and Mo was the one doing the signings before he left to join the RFL.

Dave

[thegimble]

DaveO posted:

thegimble posted:
.... and player quality from the NRL has been on the whole poor. Doris was responsible for brining in most if not all of them.

Do the names Steve Renouf, David Furner, Matty Johns, Craig Smith, Adrian Lam and Brett Dallas ring any bells?

I know we have had some less successful players but even Ainscough picked up a cup winners medal!

So to slag off ML for poor recruitment since SL started isn't exactly fair is it?

Dave

Even Ricky Bibey has a winners medal and we know how bad he is.

[DaveO]

thegimble posted:

DaveO posted:

thegimble posted:
.... and player quality from the NRL has been on the whole poor. Doris was responsible for brining in most if not all of them.

Do the names Steve Renouf, David Furner, Matty Johns, Craig Smith, Adrian Lam and Brett Dallas ring any bells?

I know we have had some less successful players but even Ainscough picked up a cup winners medal!

So to slag off ML for poor recruitment since SL started isn't exactly fair is it?

Dave

Even Ricky Bibey has a winners medal and we know how bad he is.

Which he won at Saints having been got rid of by Wigan or should I say Mo who squeezed £60K out of Saints for the privilidge of having Bibey in their squad. Or had you forgot about that? He is useless at transfer deal Mo isn't he! (not)

Dave

[Sutty]

I've posted on here before that I play golf with a lot of ex Saints players, and they all slag off Maurice. But when we actually sit down and have a good conversation with the ones who arent blinkered with their own club, they nearly all admit that they would love to have maurice at saints because he is generally such a good business man. Granted he has made a few mistakes, but then, who doesnt. I bet even Dave Whelan, Richard Branson and Bill Gates have made a few cock ups in their time. I know these are in a different league to Maurice but they are all business men none the less. He doesn't do to badly for us does he? think about the hole that we were in when Jack Robinson and his cronies where here and then after he left Mo came back and started to resurrect us, and I think that that is still going on.

[AncientWarrior]

Well Done DaveO, I am with you 100% on this!

Apart from all the top players you have named, how is this for a line-up of stars signed by Maurice Lindsay:
Shaun Edwards,
Ellery Hanley,
Dean Bell,
Gene Miles,
Martin Offiah,
Joe Lydon,
Andy Gregory,
Andy Platt,
Kelvin Skerrett,
Andy Goodway,
Graeme West.....etc,etc,etc.

If Maurice could have done any more for Wigan R.L., i'd like to know what it is.

By the way, Jack Robinson signed Doc Murray, some loser called Lester and I believe he swapped Long for another loser called Hanson.

Get a grip you people. Maurice has made Wigan R.L. the power that it is in the modern game. If you can't stand a couple or three seasons of mediocrity then watch another sport.

[GeoffN]

AncientWarrior posted:
Well Done DaveO, I am with you 100% on this!

Apart from all the top players you have named, how is this for a line-up of stars signed by Maurice Lindsay:
Shaun Edwards,
Ellery Hanley,
Dean Bell,
Gene Miles,
Martin Offiah,
Joe Lydon,
Andy Gregory,
Andy Platt,
Kelvin Skerrett,
Andy Goodway,
Graeme West.....etc,etc,etc.

If Maurice could have done any more for Wigan R.L., i'd like to know what it is.

By the way, Jack Robinson signed Doc Murray, some loser called Lester and I believe he swapped Long for another loser called Hanson.

Get a grip you people. Maurice has made Wigan R.L. the power that it is in the modern game. If you can't stand a couple or three seasons of mediocrity then watch another sport.

But they were all signed before the salary cap came in...there's a difference between simply throwing money at players, thereby outbidding other clubs (and virtually bankrupting the club) and making shrewd signings with the same resources available to spend as the competition has.

[Matthew]

Doug Stand posted:
I don't think it was as black and white as the list of players that is mentioned and Chairmain Mo taking all the credit for them. Sean Edwards credit sAlex Murphy with his signature and likewise Alex claims the same.
Offiah's signature was not a difficult one, it was a question of Mo saying to John Monie... do you want Offiah... not a difficult question.
Also as Geoff says, it is easier to do business with a big bag of cash. Look at his signings last year... Vaeliki, Moran, Davico, Seu Seu... very poor.

Chairman Mo knows how to make money and do business but he should leave the rugby matters to those that know.

Wasn't it ML that helped bring us back from relegation into the most succesfull sporting team in the world?

The question is who would you have signed instead last year? Taking into account availability as well as the dreaded 20/20 and overseas quota.

We tried Gasnier, but he wouldn't come and as has been mentioned; we do not have unlimited resources.

Moran was the best player in an average London team - look at his position in the try scoring charts. Lam was going to retire so we had to find a replacement. Robinson had betrayed the trust of the team and whilst he has done well at Salford; he isn't the next Shaun Edwards.

Davico was injured - nothing could benn done about that. ML didn't investigate the healing of his injury so some blame must go to the medical staff.

Seu Seu and Vaeliki have both been disappointing - but they are both internationals that don't count on the quota with good records. Some people on here are still convinced that DV will have an awesome season next year. Seu Seu convinced Feca to come here and he looks like he could do something for us.

Farrells departure was a disaster, but what can you do when a player wants to leave? The "honouring contract" debate has raged for months on here; but at the end of the day you cannot force a player to stay against their will.

ML is the only constant still at the club from the glory days. DW couldn't care either about the Warriors yet seems to receive much less criticism than ML.

Obviously I admit that we are not the awesome force that we once were and we have had a disappointing season. However I am pretty pleased with the way things are currently going at the club and unlike some are optimistic about the future.

Most saints fans (according to the last time I could be bothered to go on RLFans) hate ML with a passion; and there cannot be a much better endorsement than that.

[DaveO]

Doug Stand posted:

2. Mo should have had Davico checked out properly for medical history. It;s like buying a car and not looking at the service history. Asking for trouble.

He wasn't injured when we signed him, he got injured after that and the medics cleared him as OK. ML would not have had a leg to stand on had he tried to cancel a player past fit because he was injured!

It is a minor miracle he managed to off-load him and sign Guisett when the injury reoccurred as normally you can't just cut players from a contract due to injury.

3. Yeah sure DV could turn out to be a decent player. When we have a decent pack and halves in particular the halves but why did he not try for Lyon. He was always the better player at Parra.

Lyon wasn't out of contract and had gone walkabout. I can never see Wigan (well ML) signing a player in dispute with his club.

The person that was mainly responsible for getting Wigan back on it's feet was Alex Murphy. At the end of the day it all down to getting the two points and getting trophies. Wigan won the JPT thanks to Murph and we progressed from strength to strength from then on.

You are joking?

But if you are not, who appointed Murphy?

A JPS win may have changed the perception of the club from relegation fodder to a potentially successful side long term, but it was ML who came in when the club was going nowhere and no doubt ML thought Murphy was the best man for the job at the time so he was appointed. ML then appointed the likes of Loewe and Monie and was responsible for signing many a good player.

I was reading "Blood, Mud and Glory" that chronicled Wigans 90/91 season the other night and it goes on at length how ML persuaded Botica to come over and that there was a future for him at Wigan.

People forget things like this and as I said earlier in the thread seem only to look for the negatives.

I don't dispute there are some, (the Farrel saga for example) but on the whole he has a pretty good record compared to his contemporaries.

Dave

[DaiJones]

We can't really blame Maurice for not buying Lyon, I'm not sure there were many people scouring the Wee Waa pig hunting belt for world class centres at the time. It was just down to Millward's knowledge of the Aussie market and a particular player...hopefully he can uncover some gems for us in the future.

[DaveO]

Doug Stand posted:

DaveO posted:
You are joking?
But if you are not, who appointed Murphy?
Dave

No I'm not joking. Yes fair enough ML appinted Murphy because he couldn't get Doug Laughton. It was a shear fluke that he got him because he was after Laughton and he was all but there but changed his mind at the last minute.
Murphy was the man that set a very average team on the way to sucess. the JPT was the foundations that Wigan sucess was built. Murphy set up the team.

But the team didn't stay like that for long did it? The calibre of players Wigan signed got better as time went on, long after Murphy had left.

Once he had leff the fact is Murphy had no influence on the team at all and ML was around guiding things a heck of alot longer.

To say Murphy started it all is in my view plain daft. He wasn't at the club long enough to have that great an influence on it and had nothing to do with the success from 1985 onwards into the mid-nineties.

ML will always look to Botiica for a sucess story. Monie wanted Phil Blake, I know that and it worked for him. Then again had Monie signed Phil Blake who knows... we may have been just as sucessful... you don;t know. Although I doubt it Bots goal kicking won us the blood, mud and glory season.

In the book it mentions that signing Botica plugged the goal kicking hole in the team and so I just can't see how his signing can be anything other than a tick in the credit box for ML.

anyway, when it comes down to it... it wasn't genious by ML to get Monie and Lowe. They were the best coaches around and lets be honest. The teams they had were unbelievable, thanks to a big bag of cash.

Of corse they were the best but I think you miss the point. That is, they still had to be persuaded to come here in the first place.

They may also have had cash to spend but Leeds were almost printing money trying to complete.

The could not. Leeds proved just chucking moeny at the problem does not work. There is more too it than that.

Without ML's business mind and other things he put together Wigan wouldn't have had the amount of sucess that they had... but steadyon with praise there. ML did OK... but a lot more did a lot more with a lot less!

Such as who? Not many teams got a look in from 1985 onwards.

But it is not a case of praising ML anyway. The original point of this thread was basically he was/is totally useless and a liability. As I have kept saying people with that view are ignoring the good he did.

I don't think sayng the signing of Botica for example was a bit of luck. You can only judge by results and like it or not for over a decade ML rans a club that had unequalled success.

If he makes a mistake, fair enough and I will be complaining as I did over his handling of the Farrell saga, but reading some of the posts you would think all the good that has happened at Wigan over the years was someone else's doing and all the bad his.

Dave