WiganWarriorsFans.com

I think a lot of it is injuries, as well as recruitment.
The top teams like Wire and Cats have most of their first 17 fit and available every week.
Wigan, Leeds and Saints have not with up to 10 players out of the 17 missing. This is bound to effect the quality of the Rugby being played.
Wire have looked very good and Cats have looked very impressive in a solid way more than spectacular.
They have both recruited well from the NRL.
Sandow and Gidley look very good. Stewart, Taylor and Carney are each of them a class act.
Wigan, Saints and Leeds have not recruited that class from the NRL.

I know we have been poor but how come when Wire and Cats look so good we are joint top with them?
I have my own thoughts on that and SL may be poor, Wire and Cats aren't garbage though and IMO neither are we.

Wiganer Ted wrote:I think a lot of it is injuries, as well as recruitment.
The top teams like Wire and Cats have most of their first 17 fit and available every week.
Wigan, Leeds and Saints have not with up to 10 players out of the 17 missing. This is bound to effect the quality of the Rugby being played.
Wire have looked very good and Cats have looked very impressive in a solid way more than spectacular.
They have both recruited well from the NRL.
Sandow and Gidley look very good. Stewart, Taylor and Carney are each of them a class act.
Wigan, Saints and Leeds have not recruited that class from the NRL.

I know we have been poor but how come when Wire and Cats look so good we are joint top with them?
I have my own thoughts on that and SL may be poor, Wire and Cats aren't garbage though and IMO neither are we.

Sandow injured and Wire start losing, get nilled by the bottom club in SL, look at the bench - Wire are garbage. Compare Wire with 4, 6 years ago. Take Carney out in particular, throw in Taylor and are you telling me Cats are not garbage. Win or lose, virus or healthy, all fit or several injured and after 10+ game all we have heard from our coach / players is that we are garbage in possession.

SL is at its lowest, even Championship clubs fancy there chances nowadays.

Simple test. Somebody new to RL would you have taken them to any game involving Wigan thus far in this SL and they would have been so impressed they would be saying I will come again, when is the next game?

cpwigan wrote:

Wiganer Ted wrote:I think a lot of it is injuries, as well as recruitment.
The top teams like Wire and Cats have most of their first 17 fit and available every week.
Wigan, Leeds and Saints have not with up to 10 players out of the 17 missing. This is bound to effect the quality of the Rugby being played.
Wire have looked very good and Cats have looked very impressive in a solid way more than spectacular.
They have both recruited well from the NRL.
Sandow and Gidley look very good. Stewart, Taylor and Carney are each of them a class act.
Wigan, Saints and Leeds have not recruited that class from the NRL.

I know we have been poor but how come when Wire and Cats look so good we are joint top with them?
I have my own thoughts on that and SL may be poor, Wire and Cats aren't garbage though and IMO neither are we.

Sandow injured and Wire start losing, get nilled by the bottom club in SL, look at the bench - Wire are garbage. Compare Wire with 4, 6 years ago. Take Carney out in particular, throw in Taylor and are you telling me Cats are not garbage. Win or lose, virus or healthy, all fit or several injured and after 10+ game all we have heard from our coach / players is that we are garbage in possession.

SL is at its lowest, even Championship clubs fancy there chances nowadays.

Simple test. Somebody new to RL would you have taken them to any game involving Wigan thus far in this SL and they would have been so impressed they would be saying I will come again, when is the next game?

Wigan beat Cats with all those players in except Carney - and we were missing loads of our salary cap.

In the good old days, the top clubs were regularly beaten by inferior or Championship Teams in the Challenge Cup. Even Wigan almost lost to Pilkington's, an Amateur team a few decades ago. That hasn't happened now for years, the gulf is so great. And so much so that the top SL clubs are seeded out of the competition till the later rounds, to avoid the one-sided massacres that have become the norm.

Also, SL players going over to NRL in the last few seasons, have all done remarkably well and not seemed out of place, even those names some of the fans say were only average. And finally England beat the Kiwis (all International NRL players) so we are hardly a "garbage" league.

They say in football that England are rubbish because so many players in the Prem are foreigners and our clubs have not fared at all well against European teams in the various comps in this time.
Also, our ru team has done nothing in world cups for ages, in fact none of the UK countries even qualified for the semis - and that was in this country.

Yet, mindful of that, you don't hear their supporters calling their domestic comp "garbage", you just don't. Or is that a RL thing to bag our game down. Seems like a death wish ?

Pilks game was 1977 :exc:

No matter what the competition there will always be players with considerable potential. The NRL now want them ASAP before they waste too long it SL. Equally, the NRL has expanded and needs more and more players. The international success is arguable down to players playing in the NRL; when we last got close we had plenty getting experience in the then NSWRL.

It is the old red herring. Foreigners stop British youngsters developing. Far from it, the opposite. Football has kicked on because of the influx of foreign players, foreign coaches which has forced young British youngsters to improve if they want to make it and they are doing so. Interestingly, we have never been as spoiled as we are for strikers in the forthcoming Euros. CL - Tougher than ever so do not expect to dominate it but we still do okay; City in the semi, might even win it.

Antipodeans raised the standard of British RL; even moreso Antipodean coaches, We now struggle to attract great antipodean coaches! We are choking with the British boys club of coaches. RU - Biggest impact = foreign coaches!

Cherry you make owners accept personal liability before they spend big on a club.

The problem is you are trying to rewrite History. Wigan's financial woes were less about players etc but more so the unanticipated costs incurred by the Whitbread Stand and the break up of the gang of 4 with Jack Robinson virtually left alone to fight with Dave Whelan. Ironically, Jack Robinson followed you ideology and tries to balance books etc etc.

What Wigan did do was make the sport much more marketable for all (something most other clubs forget / ignore) which in turn brought in better sponsorship and deals. Unfortunately, not only had the Gang of 4 broken up BUT Murdoch was battling to try to wrestle control of the real jewel; the NRL with British RL used as a pawn and the SL War erupted. Players during that period made an incredible amount of money but clubs lost focus on what mattered; the product out on the field of play. Much the same as now.

Penny pinching achieves NOTHING; No growth, no development. Speculate to accumulate will always be true.

Nobody ever pretended excellence was easy nor should it. We do know that when Alan Sugar tried to self impose a cap on Spurs it failed miserably. You say increase wages; yes because guess what the standard goes up with a far greater choice of footballers incl from overseas guess what has happened OUR youngsters, our British players are getting better, we now even have choices for England internationally. Who would have figured that better players from overseas/even Britain = better youngsters too. What an odd idea. Oh wait; we experienced it in the 80's, we even experienced with Trent B and Pat etc developing our youngsters. Even better, overseas world class coaches = better players, a better league. Interestingly Tom Johnstone stated Brian Smith made him a far better player. Players said the same about Madge. Who would figure great overseas coaches would improve a competition. I mean Leicester have gone from British coached on the verge of relegation to Overseas coached on the verge of a Prem Title. Leicester make a mockery of all your doom mongering. Ask the British Leicester players now getting international recognition, ask the British Leicester fans having the time of their lives, ask the bank manager how a team spending far less can win or challenge those spending 10 times, 20 times more. Oh wait it cannot happen. Bollocks. It happened in RL. Leeds spent more than Wigan and got very little. Fans want great RL, they want great players because Under Cherry Pie; Andy Greg never exists, Shaun Edwards never exists, Ellery Hanley never exists and so on and so on. Not much different than the Cherry Pie world today

Kids play sport to be their hero, to be part of something special NOT told be grateful and if you are lucky you will get 10 bob playing in British RL OR if you want to make GB better go overseas and pla in the NRL.

If we drop the call and all the clubs follow cp's advice and raise wages in expectation of success and higher crowds then we do lose most of the clubs IMO.

As time goes on I can see more and more sense in daveo's suggestion that almost all the TV money should be channelled to the SL clubs. This would allow us to match the NRL across the board with no extra income. Obviously the only way you'd get into the SL from below would be with the help of the sort of millionaire benefactor CP is advocating. Most seasons any promotion/relation mechanism would be a farce with hugely different resources for each team. But maybe that's the choice we have to make to have a top division with enough quality to be meaningful against the NRL.

Mike wrote:If we drop the call and all the clubs follow cp's advice and raise wages in expectation of success and higher crowds then we do lose most of the clubs IMO.

As time goes on I can see more and more sense in daveo's suggestion that almost all the TV money should be channelled to the SL clubs. This would allow us to match the NRL across the board with no extra income. Obviously the only way you'd get into the SL from below would be with the help of the sort of millionaire benefactor CP is advocating. Most seasons any promotion/relation mechanism would be a farce with hugely different resources for each team. But maybe that's the choice we have to make to have a top division with enough quality to be meaningful against the NRL.

Has much as I don't like that idea of casting clubs out of SL adrift.I have to agree it may be the only way to compete with NRL.