Batemans's departure confirmed

[Southern Softy]

We've been there before with Field in the halves and it wasn't as good as Cust & Smith, partly because Harry Smith didn't suit the Cust role and Field seemed to be constrained by his role in the halves. Also, French seemed to hang back a bit at full-back. Oddly, perhaps, Miski seemed to play quite well on the wing. I don't know about the up-and-coming kids but the club seems to have a reluctance to play young players.
I'd rather we had a proper replacement available for Cust if he's injured, as opposed to shunting several players around and if Powell is out - then O'Neill is perfectly good to play.

[lucky 13]

I think the cover situation is where teams have lagged behind Saints. Saints have run with higher quality less depth squad for a few seasons now.
Given they have been pretty lucky injury wise it's worked. This seems a model we are copying to some degree I can't see many teams running with what I class a first class half as back up. It's also maybe a consequence in real terms of SL cap becoming less and NRL one increasing. That's how the cover should be and we are maybe a dominant middle and a back rower short. Bevan, Jai and Cust give us cover most teams would take.

[Dreamteam]

Reading a piece with peet about bateman from yesterday it looks like the stance may have changed slightly. From the statement read from the club it sounded like we had absolutely no chance of finding a replacement because of how late we found out he was leaving. Now he’s
saying

Obviously we’ve got room to work with now, but the last thing we want to do is rush out.

“The first crack will go to people who are here.”

[Charriots Offiah]

Reading a piece with peet about bateman from yesterday it looks like the stance may have changed slightly. From the statement read from the club it sounded like we had absolutely no chance of finding a replacement because of how late we found out he was leaving. Now he’s
saying

Obviously we’ve got room to work with now, but the last thing we want to do is rush out.

“The first crack will go to people who are here.”

Availability is likely to be the biggest obstacle. My view is that Wigan should not have agreed to Bateman’s transfer until a suitable replacement was in place. As the season unfolds there is no doubt that players will become available however, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the right person will be available.

[Dreamteam]

Reading a piece with peet about bateman from yesterday it looks like the stance may have changed slightly. From the statement read from the club it sounded like we had absolutely no chance of finding a replacement because of how late we found out he was leaving. Now he’s
saying

Obviously we’ve got room to work with now, but the last thing we want to do is rush out.

“The first crack will go to people who are here.”

Availability is likely to be the biggest obstacle. My view is that Wigan should not have agreed to Bateman’s transfer until a suitable replacement was in place. As the season unfolds there is no doubt that players will become available however, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the right person will be available.

I believe pressure should have been put on him earlier. The talks with wests started months ago. Make him make a decision to give us time. You can’t tell him take as long as u want let him run all over us then start complaining when we’ve got no time to get players in. The clubs it’s own worst enemy all the time. It’s like we’re constantly trying to be this nice club instead of being ruthless.

[southportcdm]

There's no doubt in my mind that the club has been caught out by the Bateman move even if it was trying to behave correctly and do things 'by the book' It wasn't really a surprise was it? It's possible that we may make a signing during the season that helps us win the GF but our chances of success are reduced by not having a suitable signing (even if not a direct replacement) in place now. With the existing squad plus Bateman (close to his best) I think we had a chance of going very close this season but now I feel we'll fall just short of the final again. We'll need several signings for 2024 and I can see why some people think we should save cash and spend big for next season but we can't keep planning to win it sometime in the future. Let's spend now and win it this season. I'm sick of the saints winning year after year, if we keep waiting for them to get worse somebody else will beat us.

[WarriorWinger]

Availability is likely to be the biggest obstacle. My view is that Wigan should not have agreed to Bateman’s transfer until a suitable replacement was in place. As the season unfolds there is no doubt that players will become available however, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the right person will be available.

We don't and can't always replace a player by signing a player, otherwise we would never bring any of the young lads through.

Also the club can't sign a player without the conclusion of the exiting player, what could they possibly say to any potential replacement we may sign you but then again if the other deal falls through we won't, you are not going to get anybody on that kind of basis, in the circumstances I think the club have handled this the best way they possibly could.

We have KPP for a year in his preferred position, Isa who can do a job albeit not as good as Bateman, but with an out and out centre at the side of him it should not leave him too exposed in defence (apart from the obvious shooting the line that he does but that could be due to not having confidence in his centre previously), we have some talent coming through the ranks with the young lads who will have a year to dip in and out of the first team for experience, if come towards the back end of the season the club don't feel they will develop enough to be a first team regular in 2024 then they can look to recruit

[Big Steve]

1) Time for KPP to start to move from potential to deliver more 80 min performances - which I think is a good point in his career to do this and now he gets the opportunity.

2) We finally have strength in the centres so less need for 2nd rows to go to the centre role consistently which has to be a step forward.

3) Opportunity for the younger players to get some game time and not be blocked out - again something we suffered from last year. Got to be a positive.

......and finally, looking at the negative aspect of the strength in depth of SL for a positive. Leeds showed you could be sh*t most of the season and still come within a whisker of winning the GF. If we go 3/4 of the season without a top replacement and manage to sign one late on then I'm sure we'll still have been strong enough to be in contention and opportunity for improvement at the important part of the
season.

[nathan_rugby]

Availability is likely to be the biggest obstacle. My view is that Wigan should not have agreed to Bateman’s transfer until a suitable replacement was in place. As the season unfolds there is no doubt that players will become available however, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the right person will be available.

We don't and can't always replace a player by signing a player, otherwise we would never bring any of the young lads through.

Also the club can't sign a player without the conclusion of the exiting player, what could they possibly say to any potential replacement we may sign you but then again if the other deal falls through we won't, you are not going to get anybody on that kind of basis, in the circumstances I think the club have handled this the best way they possibly could.

We have KPP for a year in his preferred position, Isa who can do a job albeit not as good as Bateman, but with an out and out centre at the side of him it should not leave him too exposed in defence (apart from the obvious shooting the line that he does but that could be due to not having confidence in his centre previously), we have some talent coming through the ranks with the young lads who will have a year to dip in and out of the first team for experience, if come towards the back end of the season the club don't feel they will develop enough to be a first team regular in 2024 then they can look to recruit

They really haven’t.

They’ve let a contracted player leave with no replacement lined up in an area of the pitch we have limited cover.

Contracts clearly worth nothing at Wigan which is why we can never seem to build teams and keep players locked down.

[Charriots Offiah]

Availability is likely to be the biggest obstacle. My view is that Wigan should not have agreed to Bateman’s transfer until a suitable replacement was in place. As the season unfolds there is no doubt that players will become available however, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the right person will be available.

We don't and can't always replace a player by signing a player, otherwise we would never bring any of the young lads through.

Also the club can't sign a player without the conclusion of the exiting player, what could they possibly say to any potential replacement we may sign you but then again if the other deal falls through we won't, you are not going to get anybody on that kind of basis, in the circumstances I think the club have handled this the best way they possibly could.

We have KPP for a year in his preferred position, Isa who can do a job albeit not as good as Bateman, but with an out and out centre at the side of him it should not leave him too exposed in defence (apart from the obvious shooting the line that he does but that could be due to not having confidence in his centre previously), we have some talent coming through the ranks with the young lads who will have a year to dip in and out of the first team for experience, if come towards the back end of the season the club don't feel they will develop enough to be a first team regular in 2024 then they can look to recruit

They really haven’t.

They’ve let a contracted player leave with no replacement lined up in an area of the pitch we have limited cover.

Contracts clearly worth nothing at Wigan which is why we can never seem to build teams and keep players locked down.

+1. And that is why we are having limited success. The present model is not working.