wigan camp

[Mike]

Sounds like some are arguing that Madge wasn't that great. He did well with a poor side in the first year but massively underachieved with a far better side in the second year, possibly already having checked out as he was on his way? Are we brushing over that part of McGuires legacy because he was the messiah?

From then on Wane has lost good players and had to replace mainly from within or on the cheap. I don't think many are suggesting that he fully controls the recruitment at Wigan.

As to the infamous quote that he wanted to improve things over McGuire. Well imagine if he had said something along the lines of there is nothing left to learn, Wigan are perfect, I'm not changing a thing, no striving for improvement from me just keep everything as it is now, it can't be better. I can't fault him for a second for trying to improve, not even trying is a recipe for failure without any doubt. Now whether he's achieved that sought after improvement I'm no so sure.

I think I'll see where we are and how we are playing after 10 games or so this season before I jump on the Wane in or out bandwagons.

[markill]

In Maguire's first season we were the most penalised side in the league. Won LLS & GF. In Wane's first season we were the second least penalised side in the league. Won LLS. In Wane's 2nd season we were the 2nd most penalised team in the league, win CC & GF.

Whilst I agree we're giving away too many penalties, we can't say that is because of any culture Wane has created or will necessarily make us ultimately not be winners. The problem that I don't recall under Madge and we do have more now to my mind is the scraps and fights. We're wanting to get drawn in to them, that distracts the players from executing their core skills like passing, catching and tackling. That's why Cockayne started a fight after the Allgood try and it worked.

[The booze hound]

I think I'll see where we are and how we are playing after 10 games or so this season before I jump on the Wane in or out bandwagons.

Me too, but there is no denying this could be a make or break season for Wane. I hope it is make, because that'd mean success for the team and that's all we want. For me seeing the team "progress" is not enough because it seems to have gone backwards under Wane's tenure and any progress now could still leave us behind his starting point. I expect to see us lift a trophy this season. Am I being unreasonable?

[Owd Codger]

I find this forum infuriating at times: it offers the opportunity to state your views, but as soon as somebody does we get down to school playground level, almost "my dad's bigger than your dad" stuff.

If someone tries to balance a thread by saying something positive about Wane, then they're a happy clapper, stupid, or "can't see anything wrong" with him.

To make my views clear I'll start by saying that, like a lot of posters, I am very concerned about the number of penalties we give, about the ridiculous idea of Faz as an "enforcer", and that we are overdoing the physical, intimidating approach to the point that we could be seen as thuggish.

Please ignore the above if you can't understand a balanced, honest view and just write me off as another happy clapper for what follows:

We are only 4 matches into the season, for goodness sake. It's not gone too well, but Moose has just played his first game back; Gelling, who hadn't been great and was gathering a crowd of knockers, made 181 metres v HKR and seems to have silenced his critics (for now); George Williams, a 20 year old stand-off, seems to be performing pretty well; and we played our last game with 6 players aged 21 or under in the 17. I find this very encouraging.

In case that's not enough positive stuff to make sure I'm shot down in flames, it's my honest opinion that Shaun Wane takes a lot of the credit. If the posters on here picked the team, we'd have dropped Budgie, Matty Smith, George Williams, Gelling, Joel T plus anyone under 17 stone (just for Menpond!).

Sarginson is a case in point: for a large part of last season he either wasn't good enough or was being played in the wrong position. By the end of the season he gets picked for England and plays a stormer - still, if McBanana would only read the Wigan Fans' Forum ...

Number 4 in sc74's list of "highlights" about SW is " Not listening to more intelligent/experienced people." So he should take advice from EVERYBODY, if what I read on here is to be believed?

Finally, to all who insist on comparing Wane with Maguire - I'll say this slowly: . . Maguire . . had . . a . . different . . team . . (Finch, Hoffman, Lima, Sam etc). You can't make a valid comparison between two coaches on the basis of how good the team was under each of them when one clearly had a better team. FWIW I think Maguire is the better coach, but I also think SW has done a decent job and deserves a chance. Just cut out the silly penalties and over-physical approach, Shaun, and ... oh, don't lose any sleep over the fans' forum.

Flak jacket fastened, helmet on, adopt brace position ... :eusa12:

MMM, MPE you must find it infuriating to listen to discussions anywhere about Wigan RLFC then. To be honest by far the worst place is at the DW itself. I actually sit in silence when watching games BTW other than celebrating good play.

Nobody has mentioned happy clapper have they and by far the most insulting posters tend to be those who are blinkered towards positive whereas most posters are balanced.

I take your points re the players and I never expect any professional player / coach to take notice of what fans say. If I was a coach of any sport I would never read any form of media.

I have to take issue with your statements re Maguire. Your statement is factually incorrect. Madge came to Wigan and inherited the squad of players already present. A set of players / a club that was still struggling to recapture its position in the game. SO THE STARTING POINT for Madge was FAR WORSE than the one Wane inherited.

We won a GF and dominated SL with a rookie full back (Tomkins) that Madge had the foresight to put there unlike Wane who was his junior coach for 3 or more seasons and never saw the FB in him! Goulding on the wing. Gleeson as a centre living on borrowed career time. Paul Deacon meant to be a coach had to play 6. Fielden who never recaptured his Bradford form but rebuilt his confidence under Madge. Mac came through under Madge. Piggy was transformed by Madge from an unfit player cutting training. Coley? last season. H and Joel and Lockers. Any better than what Wane has now? Feka and Preccy as interchange. NO MADGE ACHIEVED FAR MORE THAN WANE CAN DREAM OF. He rebuilt a failing underachieving club. He took players and rebuilt them gave them extra time in their careers. He never complained, he never blamed others. He took Wane into that environment; Noble never did. Wane had a fantastic opportunity to learn, the club was set up for success from top to bottom. IIRC, Rads football manager was a Madge idea.

So many of us wanted Wane to take over. It made sense. What did Wane do he made the following ludicrous statement;

"Michael Maguire has put a structure in place, which is going to carry on, but I feel I can improve things.

"There's been games this year I don't think we should have lost and it's my job as head coach to make sure the lads are prepared and we win those games."

By his own statement Shaun Wane has failed and the man he felt he could do better than has gone on to bigger and better things AGAIN reviving a club from failure to GF glory!

Your whole post infers that nobody who supports Wigan RLFC has a right to express an opinion particularly regarding our club underachieving which we are IMO. The standards at Wigan are not the standards of lesser clubs and we had/have the set up and the players but it is derailed by a coach clinging onto a fraction of what Madge offered him. Indeed, we probably refer to Madge because as yet we have never seen anything innovative / progressive by Wane as a coach. Worse, we accuse and BLAME match officials, other clubs/coaches/players even our own players but not once has the man who points his finger at all and sundry ever held his hands up and said I screwed up.

I hope that is balanced for you MPE

A bit rich for you to accuse anyone of insulting others when most of the insulting and snide retorts come from the same user names who attack anyone who shows the slightest inkling of support for Wane, Lenaghan or anything they don't like at the club.

Also a bit rich to talk about a balanced view, when the website is dominated by the same small handful who attack anyone who again do not fall in line with their own negative comments and continual moaning about everything.

And please give it a rest about Madge, as we all know he was a great Coach here at Wigan, but was only here for a agreed short period to improve the coaching and training at the club and the moment he got a big and better offer from Australia, he would be off without hesitation which happen when Russell Crowe saw his potential of a Head Coach with his success with Wigan.

Surely, you have noticed how many good posters have disappeared from the website or now just come on to observe and say nothing.

Can you blame them!

[sc74]

I find this forum infuriating at times: it offers the opportunity to state your views, but as soon as somebody does we get down to school playground level, almost "my dad's bigger than your dad" stuff.

If someone tries to balance a thread by saying something positive about Wane, then they're a happy clapper, stupid, or "can't see anything wrong" with him.

To make my views clear I'll start by saying that, like a lot of posters, I am very concerned about the number of penalties we give, about the ridiculous idea of Faz as an "enforcer", and that we are overdoing the physical, intimidating approach to the point that we could be seen as thuggish.

Please ignore the above if you can't understand a balanced, honest view and just write me off as another happy clapper for what follows:

We are only 4 matches into the season, for goodness sake. It's not gone too well, but Moose has just played his first game back; Gelling, who hadn't been great and was gathering a crowd of knockers, made 181 metres v HKR and seems to have silenced his critics (for now); George Williams, a 20 year old stand-off, seems to be performing pretty well; and we played our last game with 6 players aged 21 or under in the 17. I find this very encouraging.

In case that's not enough positive stuff to make sure I'm shot down in flames, it's my honest opinion that Shaun Wane takes a lot of the credit. If the posters on here picked the team, we'd have dropped Budgie, Matty Smith, George Williams, Gelling, Joel T plus anyone under 17 stone (just for Menpond!).

Sarginson is a case in point: for a large part of last season he either wasn't good enough or was being played in the wrong position. By the end of the season he gets picked for England and plays a stormer - still, if McBanana would only read the Wigan Fans' Forum ...

Number 4 in sc74's list of "highlights" about SW is " Not listening to more intelligent/experienced people." So he should take advice from EVERYBODY, if what I read on here is to be believed?

Finally, to all who insist on comparing Wane with Maguire - I'll say this slowly: . . Maguire . . had . . a . . different . . team . . (Finch, Hoffman, Lima, Sam etc). You can't make a valid comparison between two coaches on the basis of how good the team was under each of them when one clearly had a better team. FWIW I think Maguire is the better coach, but I also think SW has done a decent job and deserves a chance. Just cut out the silly penalties and over-physical approach, Shaun, and ... oh, don't lose any sleep over the fans' forum.

Flak jacket fastened, helmet on, adopt brace position ... :eusa12:

MMM, MPE you must find it infuriating to listen to discussions anywhere about Wigan RLFC then. To be honest by far the worst place is at the DW itself. I actually sit in silence when watching games BTW other than celebrating good play.

Nobody has mentioned happy clapper have they and by far the most insulting posters tend to be those who are blinkered towards positive whereas most posters are balanced.

I take your points re the players and I never expect any professional player / coach to take notice of what fans say. If I was a coach of any sport I would never read any form of media.

I have to take issue with your statements re Maguire. Your statement is factually incorrect. Madge came to Wigan and inherited the squad of players already present. A set of players / a club that was still struggling to recapture its position in the game. SO THE STARTING POINT for Madge was FAR WORSE than the one Wane inherited.

We won a GF and dominated SL with a rookie full back (Tomkins) that Madge had the foresight to put there unlike Wane who was his junior coach for 3 or more seasons and never saw the FB in him! Goulding on the wing. Gleeson as a centre living on borrowed career time. Paul Deacon meant to be a coach had to play 6. Fielden who never recaptured his Bradford form but rebuilt his confidence under Madge. Mac came through under Madge. Piggy was transformed by Madge from an unfit player cutting training. Coley? last season. H and Joel and Lockers. Any better than what Wane has now? Feka and Preccy as interchange. NO MADGE ACHIEVED FAR MORE THAN WANE CAN DREAM OF. He rebuilt a failing underachieving club. He took players and rebuilt them gave them extra time in their careers. He never complained, he never blamed others. He took Wane into that environment; Noble never did. Wane had a fantastic opportunity to learn, the club was set up for success from top to bottom. IIRC, Rads football manager was a Madge idea.

So many of us wanted Wane to take over. It made sense. What did Wane do he made the following ludicrous statement;

"Michael Maguire has put a structure in place, which is going to carry on, but I feel I can improve things.

"There's been games this year I don't think we should have lost and it's my job as head coach to make sure the lads are prepared and we win those games."

By his own statement Shaun Wane has failed and the man he felt he could do better than has gone on to bigger and better things AGAIN reviving a club from failure to GF glory!

Your whole post infers that nobody who supports Wigan RLFC has a right to express an opinion particularly regarding our club underachieving which we are IMO. The standards at Wigan are not the standards of lesser clubs and we had/have the set up and the players but it is derailed by a coach clinging onto a fraction of what Madge offered him. Indeed, we probably refer to Madge because as yet we have never seen anything innovative / progressive by Wane as a coach. Worse, we accuse and BLAME match officials, other clubs/coaches/players even our own players but not once has the man who points his finger at all and sundry ever held his hands up and said I screwed up.

I hope that is balanced for you MPE

A bit rich for you to accuse anyone of insulting others when most of the insulting and snide retorts come from the same user names who attack anyone who shows the slightest inkling of support for Wane, Lenaghan or anything they don't like at the club.

Also a bit rich to talk about a balanced view, when the website is dominated by the same small handful who attack anyone who again do not fall in line with their own negative comments and continual moaning about everything.

And please give it a rest about Madge, as we all know he was a great Coach here at Wigan, but was only here for a agreed short period to improve the coaching and training at the club and the moment he got a big and better offer from Australia, he would be off without hesitation which happen when Russell Crowe saw his potential of a Head Coach with his success with Wigan.

Surely, you have noticed how many good posters have disappeared from the website or now just come on to observe and say nothing.

Can you blame them!

This made me laugh quite hard. Priceless!

[Southern Softy]

Not going to quote everything but listening to Wire FM (which is excellent and very funny) Gelling sounds as if he had a stinker at Hull KR - offloading at the wrong time, dropping the ball regularly and cutting inside instead of passing outside. Metres gained by a centre are not truly representative of quality here because he is the designated first receiver after a penalty and told to simply run forward.

That saying, he did finish last season very strongly so should be given more chances (although not too many) to get his form back - and I'm not a fan of his. One worrying aspect of our play is the way the team is sent out wound up at the start. This seems to lead to fouls, penalties and scuffles which is bound to leave an impression in the ref's mind (assuming he has one). Compare that with the lacklustre way we seem to start the second-halfs (Hull KR and the 27 second try notwithstanding). There does seem to be a problem with the talks before the match and at half-time.

As for SW - he doesn't help himself by always blaming the players and not shouldering responsibility and the obsession with bulking up the players hasn't helped. And I still don't like the second-rowers being used as battering-rams.

Hopefully, a bit of thought goes into the planning before Friday and we see a better performance.

[cpwigan]

In terms of PR, Wane is a disaster. He says far too much and lays the blame at everybody's door bar his own. Madge could speak well with the media but he kept a low profile. Wane would do well to follow that trait but he seems to 'love' the limelight of something that is largely wasted time.

In any sport, always blaming your players is a recipe for disaster.

I think you are right re Madge in his last season. IMO, the moment he announced his departure his focus was split between the two jobs and he prioritized Wembley.

People talk about our squad etc but do so in isolation. You have to look at the bigger picture and SL year on year has become weaker so even if your squad weakens, so has the competition you face. In a declining competition we continue to have access to many of the best young players / juniors in RL. Clubs were desperate to sign the likes of Rocky Hampshire and George Williams.

I know we can say wait X games but my worry is our learning curve is none existent because as far as Wane is concerned his game plan / philosophy is perfect and it is the execution by his player that lets it down. Even to ordinary fans, it is obvious that the game plan / philosophy is high risk and inconsistent. On its day, it can be magnificent but it break down far too often which is what similar game plan / philosophies die for Laughton / Widnes and Murphy / Saints. Wigan / Wane like those other teams / coaches essentially beat themselves.

[cpwigan]

WW, your posts imply that you have been here far longer than your login and your reaction is the same here as it is on Wigan Today.

EVERYBODY here wants Wigan RLFC to be hugely successful

[sc74]

...and sport depends on confidence! More like Victorian Dad out of Viz. PL mentioned about his punishment for being late for his massage :conf:

[cpwigan]

Its not as if Wigan need to change dramatically but as TEW says it is about getting to and spending far more time in the opp 20 and then putting on the fancy stuff albeit not forgetting tying in defenders with crash ball tactics even then. Wane even acknowledges the slow POTB officiating which IMO you react to and plan accordingly. Hence, you play conservative mistake free RL from slow ball and go wide when you get the opposition on the back foot.