Exiled Wiganer
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Posts posted by Exiled Wiganer
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54 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:
Huddersfield at home drop another probably 7k too probably, and 2k less at Wakey minimum (same at Salford probably).
Very quickly you can be down 30k.
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.
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13 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:
Compare an Easter with Leeds, Wigan, Hull FC, Cas, Leigh and Catalans at home vs one with Warrington, Salford, Huddersfield, Saints, Wakey and KR at home I guess.
Glad we've seemed to arrange it to go for the record. Good when all games are on Sky too.
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.
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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.
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1 hour ago, Old Frightful said:
I bet he never did owt like that at Wigan.
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.)
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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…
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Hope he’s ok. They said he had just come back from one. That is not good.
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49 minutes ago, Sports Prophet said:
Sounds as lame an idea as the Exiles.
What would the English AFL team look like?
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On 29/03/2023 at 12:29, Harry Stottle said:
The key to Leigh winning is to keep French and Field quiet, the rest of the team and the coaching seems somewhat wanting (except Marshall) and these two are the primary reasons for Wigans success last season and evidently carried on this year.
Leigh by one score.
Nice one. You are truly a guru.
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1 minute ago, AB90 said:
But the Union equivalent doesn’t include PNG. From a very uneducated perspective, Tonga, Samoa & Fiji seem very culturally different to PNG to me.
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.
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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.
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33 minutes ago, EagleEyePie said:
I was just setting you up to highlight his many excellent qualities. Someone has to provide the assist.
You're right though, he's got great qualities that don't get enough focus. I was merely pointing out that in Super League there isn't much that the more highly rated wingers can do that Marshall can't. His record and performances speaks for itself.
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.
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27 minutes ago, EagleEyePie said:
I think it would be difficult to find another player in Super League who offers better value than Marshall. He's not likely to attract attention from Australia because of his size. The same thing probably holds him back from becoming a regular international. That means he's unlikely to command star wages. You look at players like Makinson, McGillvary and Hall and they are/were top international wingers and they'll be paid as such. Even some of our previous wingers like Charnley, Manfredi and Burgess seemed to be more highly thought of. Those players might be more suited to playing at the very highest level but Super League isn't the highest level and a lot of what makes players like that so good is superfluous. The truth is Wigan don't get much less from Marshall than we would from a player like Makinson.
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.
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4 hours ago, FearTheVee said:
The head tackle was punished. It was a penalty try.
It's not a bad tackle, he gets stepped, his arm bounces off the top of the ball, no clenched fist, feet planted before contact. It's a penalty as much as people seem to want him banned for something so inoccuous to disprove some sort of Saints disciplinary bias.
And moreover, the disciplinary committee should have to pay his costs. How very dare them.
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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.
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13 hours ago, Hull Kingston Bronco said:
Mate it was obviously tongue in cheek. It’s obvious why lots of other fans of a certain age see Wigan as the bogeyman, I just thought I was a bit daft for the bloke I replied to to say otherwise.
That being said, let’s not pretend Wigan was spending its greater revenue on players. It was funded through debt, and if you hadn’t been able to offload your ground to a supermarket and been lucky another stadium was getting built by someone else’s sugar daddy, you’d have gone bust.
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.
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6 minutes ago, Hull Kingston Bronco said:
I know, right? It’s almost like you bought the league for a decade with money it turns out you didn’t actually have, destroying all sense of competition and almost killing the entire sport in the process…
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.
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27 minutes ago, dkw said:
So out of 30 trophies Saints have won 10, so 1/3 of them. Thats not really as bad as some are trying to make out it is.
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.
31 minutes ago, dkw said:So out of 30 trophies Saints have won 10, so 1/3 of them. Thats not really as bad as some are trying to make out it is.
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10 minutes ago, Magic Superbeetle said:
We do. "New talent pool" players (aka Union players) are;
0% on the salary cap for their first full year
50% on the salary cap for the second full year
100% on the salary cap for the third full year onwards.
Also, any players whom leave for union for 5 years (ie Kyle Eastmond) are also subject to the "returning player pool" which is exactly the same. I think league and union are now so specialised however that it takes SBW players to be able to transition to both fluidly, and many of the players SL teams could target in union are far below that standard.
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.
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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.
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11 minutes ago, S.T.I.D. said:
I very much doubt it, first and foremost Saints RLFC are a very well run rugby club and in reality have cut their cloth to meet the restrictions of the Salary Cap. They have done this by having a very good Academy set up and are very astute in recognising talent in the lower leagues to develop in the clubs structure. We see so many clubs with a large turnaround of players season after season which is costly and at times a waste of salary cap, this only produces instability and reduces the standard of product. The RFL has to take some blame, dumbing down our game dragging down the top clubs to the lower clubs instead of the other way around, "framing of the future" model ended up as a farce and has created apathy. You could say the "Best Rugby Team in the World" at the moment is probably not far off as the "Best Run Rugby League Club in the World" as well, its not a rich club but its a template for other clubs to emulate to raise standards. Raise standards and the product has more value and the salary cap will grow in worth.
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.
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37 minutes ago, Dave T said:
How exactly? Genuine question. How do Salford ever overtake Saints' development pathway? Can decades of headstart ever be pulled back?
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.
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34 minutes ago, Jughead said:
It’s literally not nonsense and is indeed fact. Nobody is arguing that Saints are dominant in the Grand Final at present, however, we have had six different winners of the Challenge Cup in the past six years, we’ve had more different finalists in the past seven Grand Finals than all of the Super League Grand Finals up to that point and only Wakefield and Leigh (though they’ve never had consecutive seasons in Super League) have failed to reach a final in the past eight years. That is variety, of some form.
Super League has been, up to this point, cyclical. Saints, Wigan and Leeds have had periods of success and periods of falling away. It’s little different to Catalans three or four year period of success that saw a cup win and league leaders shield win (and Grand Final appearance). Players retire, move on or regress whilst other clubs are back on the upturn of their cycle, like, say Huddersfield who have finished third, been to a cup final that (again) was won very late and are amongst the favourites for both competitions this year.
But it hasn’t been cyclical has it. In the last 25 years Saints have won twice as many prizes as Wigan. Leeds were the best grand final winners during a golden generation, but even then Saints were the best week in week out team over most years.
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6 minutes ago, Dave T said:
If things look OK in the last 10 years, why on earth would you stretch that Outlook to 25 years to make it look worse?
I did it because the cap has been in place for that long. I would argue that the last 10 years are misleading, as they include the only sustained dip in Saints’ fortunes in that period. Time will tell, and I don’t mind coming back to this in a couple of years time.
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7 minutes ago, Jughead said:
Ten clubs in Super League have made at least one final in something like the past seven or eight years, so the variety has been shared. Alright, only one team has won the past four Grand Finals but they’ve beaten four different opponents to do so and each of the last six cup finals has had a different winner, too. I do think Rugby League always manages to find a negative in everything, when you could also say that we’ve made steps towards the variety people crave and that many finals are tense and tight affairs.
That’s nonsense. The same winner over and over again for decades, save when they pause for breath, is dominance far beyond what anyone would expect in a level playing field. That you beat different teams is actually a perfect illustration. We have 11 fairly evenly matched teams, who can compete to lose to Saints. In fact, it illustrates an even bigger gap - it is possible, if everything goes right for a club, like Catalans a couple of years ago, for them to be competitive - but then they fall away. In our relatively brief period of dominance, we played a wide variety of teams in finals, none of whom could sustain it.
No national RL stars?
in The General Rugby League Forum
Posted
One thing that would be a major leap forward would be if Netflix made an NRL series.