Exiled Wiganer

I have been busy. I used facts to show that Saints have been extraordinarily dominant in the Super League era, in a way which was astonishing when you consider the salary cap, and how that is a damning indictment of the rest of the league. The facts remain the same, the future is yet to be written. I would say though that Saints playing as well as they did against Penrith in October will see 5 in a row.

I like what Wigan are doing at the moment. We dismantled Leigh and were good value for the win against Saints. However, losing Smithies on top of Cust, Field and Cooper makes me concerned that we won’t be able to keep our intensity. Against that a hard game in France will have taken its toll. I think we will have enough and Marshall and French will see us home.

Saints will use the international break to reduce the number of SL games Knowles will miss to 4. So, Cooper has his career potentially ended, and 23 certainly chalked off, and he gets a month off.

One thing that would be a major leap forward would be if Netflix made an NRL series.

Maybe, maybe not. I don’t see it. Top of the league Wire could have sold out, HKR could have got more than 12k in, Huddersfield have had 5 figure crowds against Leeds. We will never know. My money would be around 65k.

You could still get very large crowds for the reverse fixtures: Saints 18.5k HKR 12k+ would drop us around 15k, but the rest could between them match the aggregate. Of course, if we ever have Bradford back, then we could be 90k plus if we put our mind to it.

A word on Nicholson. Peet has generally been excellent on and off the pitch for Wigan. Some may recall his strop at Nicholson signing for Wire, which was somewhat out of character. We can all see why he was so upset.

If he had, there would have been 10,000 posts shouting for him to be hanged, drawn and quartered… (It would have required all of our best WDL at the top of our game to deflect, defend, deny and distract for days.)

I think. Walmsley was a huge miss, and that Saints missed him more than we missed Field. As long as one of French or Field is at 1 we are very dangerous. I was really happy with the efforts of the young home grown Wigan players, opposite their Saints counterparts: eg Smith v Dodds, Smithies v Knowles, Havard v Lees. If those players can get the better of their “opposites” then we could go far in these fixtures. It’s also worth bearing in mind the contrast between yesterday and the Catalans game: we are an agile, fit, mobile but small side set up to entertain in good conditions. It’s such a shame that the. GF is in autumn…

Hope he’s ok. They said he had just come back from one. That is not good.

What would the English AFL team look like?

Nice one. You are truly a guru.

It depends how you look at it. There is a sense of pacific brotherhood, but each culture is very different and very proud. While similar in many ways, bear in mind how long Samoa and Tonga were at war with one another. Fiji is entirely different again. That said, if the NRL want to make this work (and the respective governments get on board) then it can work. There are very large geopolitical factors in play. As for PNG, whatever they ask for has to be taken very seriously. League can be a massive force for good over there. As with all these things, the starting point should be what the nations involved want to happen themselves.

He showed extraordinary courage and resilience when dealing with the tragic death of his brother during his time at wigan. Good luck to him whatever the future holds.

It’s a team game, I just put the ball down… I think it’s particularly gratifying because it feels like redemption after what happened to his dad.

Aside from the last sentence, which is a great summary, I think that’s far more back handed than it needs to be. Once you have said that smaller players can thrive in SL who might not in the NRL (and we benefit from that with Field and Farrell likely to be of little interest over there, or internationally, but excellent over here) then his many qualities deserve greater focus. He never gets caught. He never gives in, and came back from a serious injury similar to the one which wiped out his father’s career. He catches high balls competing with taller men. He can beat a man any which way. His defence is excellent.

And moreover, the disciplinary committee should have to pay his costs. How very dare them.

I think it’s mean to come on a thread which set its stall out as being a “based on first impressions, here’s what I think” and say it’s a waste of time: we happily make predictions on less evidence. For my part, on the limited evidence of initial competitive games, I would adjust (downwards) Wigan’s prospects, (upwards) Warrington’s and (even more upwards than treble winners) Saints, who stand a very good indeed of a quadruple. My take is that Saints will win everything, but could well play Wire and FC in the finals.

My fellow fan’s reply addresses that. Take a moment to look at your club’s accounts and losses over the years - which dwarf any debts we incurred at that time. You’d be an amateur club at best without your sugar daddies.

The period you are talking about was 25 years ago, so you could let it go. We have never gone bust. Our debts in the period in question would constitute less than your owner tips in in a single bad season. We had no sugar daddy - we spent cash generated through growing our crowds. We gave the game the highest profile it has ever had, without which super league would never have come along. We won a lot, but Saints have won more over a far far longer period than we ever did.

They have won 30 trophies since 1996, and are likely to be up to 32 by the end of the year. That is more than twice the next successful (Wigan and Leeds), and vastly more than the rest combined. The 10 year stat distorts it because it includes Saints’ only fallow period in the last 25 years.

Thanks. I do wonder though whether we have pushed enough on these as sources. I remember Kevin Ellis, who was a superb league player, and brought masses to the game, but was not as far as I can recall, a top line union player. If SL/RFL sat down with the WRL and FFRL and looked into who might be available and who might make it, and worked up a plan, in 5/6 years we could have more competitive Welsh and French teams. And the NH game would be much much stronger as a result. Honestly, I see that as win win win and a relatively easy one.

Oh, and if I was in sole control, I would make all ex union or Welsh or even French players played by English clubs players outside the cap.

I agree with everything, save only that they are hugely wealthy indeed. Take a look at the eye watering losses they have incurred without blinking an eye. They keep very quiet about that, and trade astutely on the “our dominance is against all the odds compared to others’ bad dominance” - we should add their PR department to the list of things they do best.

It takes decades of work, I agree. Getting lots and lots of development officers is the only way. We can succeed, if the entire game reaches for it. I see 3 main problems. First, our player pool is too small, and so it is easy for a small cabal to get a choke hold over it. Though, as we saw last year with Peet’s petulance over losing Nicholson, that cabal do not welcome competition. We must at least be able to get numbers back to where they were in areas which have formerly developed players. Second, we are paying far less than the competition, and that always results in a lack of talent. Which adversely affects everything. The first point can partly address that - call it the Ajax approach - while I would argue that at this point we have absolutely nothing to lose giving it a whirl, and abolishing the cap. What’s the worst that can happen - a single club winning the league over and over again?? Third, as to Saints’ domination. The first 2 play into that, but in addition other clubs have to be better. Saints have the best juniors (see above on player pool), but they have the best coaching, recruitment and retention policies, and the best board, which almost certainly feeds into the rest. They are also very good at making sure that the gross cap goes as far as it possibly can when turned into net income. There is nothing stopping other clubs - someone mentioned FC on this thread - seeking to match them at least. It will take hard work and time - looking at the competitors and the length of contracts their players are signed up for, I can see no one save perhaps for the all new Wolves getting close to Saints till 25, absent some calamitous injuries in Glassdom. But by the second half of this decade we could genuinely see a wider mix of Saints standard clubs. I actually think that, from Wigan’s perspective, Saints’ endless domination is a good thing, as it requires us to look at ourselves in a way that, maybe, an era of FC success wouldn’t. But when our overseas spots include Mago, Miski and Ellis, it’s clear we are a long way behind.