SMITH SIGNS FOR WIGAN!!!

[DaveO]

Barrett to loose now for the rest of the season untill lockers comes back

If Smith is any good and stays on the straight and narrow and we have Barrett at 13 why on earth would Lockers even get in the 17?

Hansen is as good stats-wise (and misses fewer tackles), Hock is a better 2nd row by a long way and so you would have to drop Barrett and I can't see that happening.

If Noble has any sense Lockers will have to wait until 2009 to get his 13 slot back when Barrett leaves.

Dave

Thank heavens you have no influence whatsoever in team selection. Lockers could and would get into ANY team in SL by a country mile!!

In your opinion. Care to justify it? I can justify mine.

Lockers will not get into any team by a country mile where there is a better player occupying the position he plays and at Wigan we have at least two who are better players who may be competing with for back row slots.

Now if you want argue he is a better 13 than Barrett (who has played there before) feel free.

If you want to suggest he is better than Hock at 2nd row, feel free again (though why you would try I don't know because he clearly isn't).

The ONLY position IMO Lockers could get in a this side IF Barrett goes to 13 is in place of Hansen.

Now given Hansen is also a tackling machine who prior to Lockers injury had amassed about half a dozen less tackles in total this season despite playing less minutes, has missed fewer tackles, made fewer errors and scored more tries it is not, IMO, a given he should make way for Lockers.

Lockers should have to earn his place back in the side and if Barrett goes to 13 and we are ripping teams to shreds as a result, Noble would be an idiot to change a winning formula.

But then of course Noble does have his favourites.....

Dave

[butt monkey]

For those stating that Leeds have great players incumbent in the 1,6,7,9 and 13 positions. How long has it taken this club to get to that standard and how much success have they had (ignoring the Yorkshire Cup), over the last 20 years? Patience is a virtue, and some on here have none whatsoever (which is understandable considering those stains over the hill at the moment).

Yet things in sport are cyclic, success does not follow on success forever. Mistakes will be made (however apparently minor), before the inevitable slide. It will take a great disaster to befall Leeds before they slump, yet many can see the ageing stains side slowly, guide all remaining funds (if they have any) into the hands of solicitors and architects as they promise the "Holy Grail" to their "fans".

BTW, how long did this success take to arrive at the stains? According to them, Rugby League didn't exist pre-super league era!!

[lucky 13]

Certainly a emotive debate
Just a couple of things Thought IL and Noble signed Carmont after the Samoa v ? game seem to remember that they sat in a cold Chris Moyles stadium or it was reported thus at the time if you remember he was also a Quins target and fans of the club blame IL for bringing him here .
You could say the league is average but if you looked at the bottom 4 or 5 teams when we had our glory days not one of them would live with any team in this years SL .
Saints and Leeds can turn any team over when it matters! well yes but no one could turn us over in the past, 8 in a row must have been great for other fans .
CP is a poster who I have respect for he is well informed if you agree with him or not , I do think he has been negative recently but he may have good reason ?
IL may well be a politician he may have made risky signings up to now but we are only just halfway though his first season , he took over a club with problems he has had the star player threaten to quit if not released and only the Higham issue has been a blemish , I do think that sort of thing happens all the time and it was Macnemara who made it public, inexperience on his part. Playing wise it would in my opinion have been a positive but that's a old can of worms .

[Matthew]

If you do not question/hold people to account then how do you expect things to change? Nine and Jeanette will publish their weekly letters of support in the WEP no matter what happens. Is that the way?

It depends on your outlook; be it glass half full or glass half empty. I would say that disappointments against stains aside; we are in a better position than we were last year. We only beat stains once and that was the last game of the regular season. Had we lost that game then there would have been no play off run

To the posters who argued re the quality of SL. It is exciting but that has been achieved by lowering standards/dragging everybody down. Excitement and quality are often at odds with each other.

The salary cap is outside of our control - what can we do about it? The previous administration broke it just about every season and it almost got us relegated! We can only spend so much on wages - the same amount as all the other clubs. So we have no control of the overall standard of the competition.

The 2 clubs who are ahead of the rest are well coached and their key positions 1,6,7,9 and 13 are filled by real quality. Get those positions right and you can carry fairly average players elsewhere. Look at Leeds in recent times or Saints. Injuries etc, they still win and field average players in minor positions. What is happening to our key positions? We are losing the one high quality act we have in those positions.

Leeds have Webb, Maguire, Burrow, Diskin and Sinfield
stains have Wellens, Pryce, long, KFC and Sculthorpe

Those players have been together quite a while and in Leeds case they have only become really dominant in the last couple of seasons. We have not had the same stability and our results have reflected that. The one plus point is that Pryce aside; all of the stains players are nearing the end of their careers (particularly scully who hardly plays now) - it will be interesting to see if they are so easily replaced

We have gone from signing players like Trent to offering overseas players trials. Taking self confessed speculative gambles. How is that progress? Why are local products not given trialopportunities. Are Stanton and Ainscough not entitled to be treated identically to Phelps? What message are we sending to our own players?

Anybody of Barrett's class is going to cost a fortune. St George offloaded him because they couldn't afford to keep him and preferred to pay part of wages while he played for us!

Anyway; why not use the remaining money of this years cap and take a few chances and see if we can find a good prospect for next year? That's a better use than just dividing it up among the players! Coyle will not get a regular spot in the 1st team this season so loaning him out seems like a good idea to me. For me it's - nothing ventured nothing gained

If we want success we need acoach such as Tim Sheens, Craig Bellamy or Shaun Edwards and to have better players in our key positions. Hence, I am regretfully confident we will win nothing with Brian Noble as coach and worse go backwards.

Edwards will not be coming to Wigan to coach anytime soon - it seems pretty obvious that he has designs on the England RU anyway.

We can't go backwards (from where we started) with Noble as coach - we were odds on for relegation when he took over and they have abolished that now - so unless he makes the team play so poorly that we don't get a franchise - then he will leave the team in better shape than when he took over. I don't agree with everything he does - however he is a lot better than the muppet he took over from.

My last post (no cheering lol). Whatever happened to freedom of speech.

It's alive and well on wigan-warriors.com!

[Cruncher]

Certainly a emotive debate
Just a couple of things Thought IL and Noble signed Carmont after the Samoa v ? game seem to remember that they sat in a cold Chris Moyles stadium or it was reported thus at the time if you remember he was also a Quins target and fans of the club blame IL for bringing him here .
You could say the league is average but if you looked at the bottom 4 or 5 teams when we had our glory days not one of them would live with any team in this years SL .
Saints and Leeds can turn any team over when it matters! well yes but no one could turn us over in the past, 8 in a row must have been great for other fans .
CP is a poster who I have respect for he is well informed if you agree with him or not , I do think he has been negative recently but he may have good reason ?
IL may well be a politician he may have made risky signings up to now but we are only just halfway though his first season , he took over a club with problems he has had the star player threaten to quit if not released and only the Higham issue has been a blemish , I do think that sort of thing happens all the time and it was Macnemara who made it public, inexperience on his part. Playing wise it would in my opinion have been a positive but that's a old can of worms .

Perhaps he had a bad day at school. Because it can't be anything to do with the way things at Wigan are being run.

Okay, nobody's perfect and progress has been slow, but this time last year we were looking over our shoulder at relegation again and dreading what the latest round of salary cap breach investigations might bring. Yeah, great ... I wish we were doing that again, instead of contemplating a finish in the top 3. He talks about last year's semi-final appearances, as if the fact that we haven't done it this year is some kind of grave fault for which heads must roll. We didn't make the CC semi this year because, yet again - bewilderingly - we drew the best team in the competition away. How are IL and JL supposed to be responsible for that? As for the GF, we haven't even got to the play-offs yet. So what the hell is he talking about? He chunners on as if he wants the new administration sacked after they've only been in the job for 6 months. Are they responsible for Barrett suddenly deciding to go home early? Are they responsible for the massive contracts Maurice agreed, which are still preventing us from rebuilding the team? Are they responsible for the very disappointing first team form we've seen from so-called promising youngsters like Goulding and Coyle? No. But I'll tell you what they are responsible for: securing a 50-year deal for us at the JJB, acquiring Edge Hall Road so that it's now officially our asset, and in the last few days, signing one of the potentially most exciting halfbacks in the world - at minimal cost

Sorry, but it's negative nonsense from someone who must have a personal axe to grind but is so mendacious that he clearly can't admit to the truth.

I don't know why people are even giving him the time of day. At Central Park we'd all have edged away from him so that, every match, he'd end up standing in a big patch of empty terracing on his own.

[Hawkeye]

Losing the Semi final last season was the best think to happen to wigan in the super league era.It got rid of Mo and Whelan and got us IL.

Losing that semi as made us a stronger club and now for a very long time we as fans can look to the future with excitment.

[DaveO]

Are they responsible for the massive contracts Maurice agreed, which are still preventing us from rebuilding the team? Are they responsible for the very disappointing first team form we've seen from so-called promising youngsters like Goulding and Coyle? No. But I'll tell you what they are responsible for: securing a 50-year deal for us at the JJB, acquiring Edge Hall Road so that it's now officially our asset, and in the last few days, signing one of the potentially most exciting halfbacks in the world - at minimal cost.

It was Dave Whelan who purchased Edge Hall road for Wigan while he was chairman. IL did not.

It was also Dave Whelan who offered the 25 year extension on the lease to IL as well as (according to IL) some very generous terms for the lease itself.

Edge Hall road, the 50 year lease and the generous terms of the lease fell into IL's lap on a plate and were down to the generosity of Dave Whelan in what amounted to his final acts of support for the club. Lets give the credit to right people when it is due.

Dave

[Big Steve]

Wigan are obviously moving forward in the right direction.

We have now, for the first time in years got some strength in depth for positions:

Mathers loses form - richards plays at FB.
Goulding loses form Bailey/Phelps at Centre.
Calderwood - Pat/Colbon
Carmon - 1st genuine centre we've had at wigan since the pearl...........

In the forwards we have Prescott who has come on really well this year and IMO is benefitting from having been sparingly used earlier. OCarroll has shown potential but has also shown he's not yet ready for a regular spot.
J Tomkins has really come on as well but is obviously not yet readys to start regularily, but again offers competition for forward spots. Coley is really putting the effort and quality and not a liability as some suggested.

Now we have an extremely highly rated, half back on the way over - all done with very little room under the cap.

If people want to make comparisons - remember the heady days of bringing Jordan James, trying to sign Mason, and a samoan who wouldn't play on sundays...........

Sure, there will always be some mishaps along teh way but on the whole I think we are moving forward.

[Cruncher]

Are they responsible for the massive contracts Maurice agreed, which are still preventing us from rebuilding the team? Are they responsible for the very disappointing first team form we've seen from so-called promising youngsters like Goulding and Coyle? No. But I'll tell you what they are responsible for: securing a 50-year deal for us at the JJB, acquiring Edge Hall Road so that it's now officially our asset, and in the last few days, signing one of the potentially most exciting halfbacks in the world - at minimal cost.

It was Dave Whelan who purchased Edge Hall road for Wigan while he was chairman. IL did not.

It was also Dave Whelan who offered the 25 year extension on the lease to IL as well as (according to IL) some very generous terms for the lease itself.

Edge Hall road, the 50 year lease and the generous terms of the lease fell into IL's lap on a plate and were down to the generosity of Dave Whelan in what amounted to his final acts of support for the club. Lets give the credit to right people when it is due.

Dave

That is NOT what I've been told. And no, I'm not going to give away my sources. Neither am I prepared to accept as proof comments attributed to IL which may well amount to nothing more than a bit of positive PR once the dust had settled.

My understanding is that there was quite a wrangle over both the ownership of Edge Hall Road and the JJB lease. I'm not saying there was a row, but comments like "it fell into his lap" are well wide of the mark. Well wide.

But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter a great deal. Edge Hall Road was clearly not our possession while Whelan owned us. In fact, we scarcely had an asset to call our own. At the same time, the fact that he so clearly favoured the football meant that we were constantly subjected to rumours that we could be chucked out of the JJB at his whim, regardless of whether or not we had a lease. All of that is now gone. Resist congratulating the new management on any of this if you must, but at least admit that we're now in a better position on both those fronts than we were before.

[lucky 13]

My understanding is that there was quite a wrangle over both the ownership of Edge Hall Road and the JJB lease. I'm not saying there was a row, but comments like "it fell into his lap" are well wide of the mark. Well wide.

That was my take on it the whole thing nearly fell through because of all the terms both lease and Edge Hall road but also a % of game day sundries .
Think this does depend on which side your on the Pro DW ML or the IL one as to which you believe .But if you think DW would put something in the hand of another businessman for next to nothing you are living in cloud cuckoo land