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From www.sporting-life.com/rugbyleague/news, Maurice Lindsey has stated he is no longer interested in signing Mark Gasnier:-

"There have been so many wildly-exaggerated reports connecting us with Mark Gasnier that we felt it necessary to publicly announce that, as much as we admire Mark, we will not be pursuing our interest.

"There have been reports both in this country and Australia suggesting that we were about to pay a king's ransom when in reality any interest we have shown has been within salary cap restrictions and considerably less than the outrageous sums stated by certain people.

"Perhaps suggesting that Wigan were prepared to pay a high sum helped to improve negotiations in Australia. We will not be part of that game. It is not the first time that we have been mentioned in this way by a particular agent in Australia."

I sense a couple of little digs here: first off the fact that certain players' agents seem to use our club as a bargaining tool for their players to try and boost wages, which is perhaps why we get linked with all-and-sundry whenever a player gets close to ending their contract - perhaps people need to be a bit more cautious whenever a name gets linked to Wigan in future? Also mention of the salary cap reminds me of a column in last weekend's Daily Star on Sunday where a certian Gary Schofield opened his rather big mouth (for a change) and questioned how a team like Wigan can afford to buy such expensive players such as Danny Orr and others despite the salary cap. Schofield sounds like a broken record sometimes, but it is perhaps a timely reminder to the rest of the league that we're at least trying to conform to the restrictions.

I just hope that we have learned our lessons from the past and dont start to look for any Australian centre who has had a good year or 2. I now would concentrate on someone like Timmins/Devere if those 2 are a no go invest the money back into re-signing Lam. I fear our search for a centre could get farcical if we dont set ourselves some limits. It is also starting to look like the signing of Talau by saints has proved a very good one now given the obviouse lack of availability of quality centre.

With Dallas seemingly having returned to fitness and a suggestion he may stay next year, Dodgy Hodgy has presumably returned to the centre position. With Aspinwall signed up, PJ still there and the likes of Brown coming through we have got wingers and centres, although obviously not in the class of some of the Aussies being mentioned. Things have been a bit unsettled this year with all the injuries plus losing Ainscough, but (hopefully) that was just a freak period of time and we shouldn't have that kind of injury crisis again.

But with the club's aim being to bring through the kids and build them up for the future, isn't there perhaps an argument to say lets have faith in them and spend the money instead on deals for Lam and Dallas, rather than spend on importing players? Aussie centres in recent years have been failures more often than successes, Renouf being the exception but (IMO) Ainscough, Mark Bell and Danny Moore being examples of less-than-successful players.