Exiled Wiganer
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Posts posted by Exiled Wiganer
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Good article on the BBC from the players’ union. It is worth bearing in mind that the NRL has attempted to dictate to not just the Pacific Nations but also the RLPA.
Both of those bodies have more power now than in the past, and their interests are not directly aligned at all.-
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10 minutes ago, GeordieSaint said:
Thanks for that Rocket. Can't help but feel the ARLC decision has been made in isolation; if it wasn't, they'd understand (and hopefully) appreciate a big competition in England at the same time of year as the FIFA World Cup is an absolute non-starter. That renegotiating access to football stadia with the clubs, Premier League and Football League is a massive task and will cost a fortune. That the UK Government are no doubt placing great pressure on the organisational committee to go ahead with the event as the UK opens up. But as importantly, much needed funds to the IRL to continue to develop the sport globally is paramount.
I am not sure pressure is the right word. The Government are doing all they can to make sure a competition can go ahead, and are prepared to pay more for that to happen.
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9 minutes ago, theswanmcr said:
I for one can’t stand the emotional rollercoaster that is this thread! A high as Tonga player says he’s playing, back down as ‘not good’ what someone is hearing, Pacific meeting but no comments is a good/bad thing.
The only certainty is that Gould will continue to be an unspeakable swear word!
It’s the hope that kills you eh
A week on and we still have some hope. It could have been all over by now.
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Beattie’s quote is interesting up to a point (and only up to a point). I have seen or heard nothing at all to suggest that the World Cup can be postponed without major trauma being caused to the game. If he believes this is “common sense” then either he is an idiot, he is lying or he should be able to frame a proposal for how that postponement could be achieved. It is one thing to pull his own team out, but it is something else entirely to demand that the whole show be shifted.
It is progress to get at least a quote from him. I guarantee that, had the players and Pacific caved by now, we would not have heard a peep. Troy Grant has played a legendary hand on this so far.
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14 minutes ago, FearTheVee said:
Not yet, although Taumololo has come out in favour of playing. Would be good to hear Woolf say the same.
JT = Tonga
JT = Legend
If we have another child, they will be called Taumololo.
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I think (on balance) we will have a World Cup, and that it may well include an Indigenous team. And if it does go ahead, I think it will be a fantastic success. The UK Government’s response has been superb - not just holding the line but directly supportive. It can’t do any harm that we are already emerging from our exit wave, and that even gloomsters on SAGE are being optimistic in public.
By now, Vlandys and Gould expected the whole thing to have folded, but they have under estimated their ability to dictate to the world. You cannot over state the significance of Tonga’s staying on board. With PNG solid, that may well be enough for all of the Pacific Nations to hold the line. The ARL and NRL have also effectively treated the Pacific Nations with complete contempt, as well as the NH and the rest of the world, and that looks to have failed. It is one thing announcing that they’re not going, and everyone caving in, but to prevent this taking place may well require them to effectively force players not to go who could play for other countries. If there is one thing that could unite the Pacific nations it would be being dictated to in that way.
This has not panned out as they expected, and there is a lot still to play for. Choosing Gould as the ambassador to make their case is something of a godsend to us, as he is so obviously a fool.
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1 minute ago, wiganermike said:
That had certainly crossed my mind, they would be less concerned with a possible England triumph I think but should one of Tonga, Samoa or Fiji win the World Cup then they will face the prospect of the tap of PI players switching to the Kangaroos turning off.
It’s not that they won’t play for the Roos, as they don’t want the Roos ever to play again.
It’s the clear implication that SoO is no longer the pinnacle.
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You’re still watching the NRL? After this week?
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4 hours ago, Bod said:
Utter rubbish. This is the first postponement Saints have have had since covid started, unlike other clubs.
Didn’t they skip Catalans last year, or did I imagine that? And if they did, does that make your comment utter rubbish?
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Saints have completely mastered the COVID outbreak (and good on them, that shows their level of professionalism). Meanwhile Wigan play another game, and likely pick up more injuries and another suspension or 2, given the RFL’s trigger happy disciplinary... how difficult can it be for us to skip matches?
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16 minutes ago, goldcoaster said:
Shows how far Super League has fallen when the competitions biggest club is signing reserve grade rubbish from Australia. Indeed the only time SL clubs sign an NRL player of note is when they are either about 35 years old or have run into legal / disciplinary problems.
We could sign better players but we waste our money on home grown talent.
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1 hour ago, Saint Toppy said:
Quite the opposite, Wigan are one of only a handful of SL clubs who should be very proud of their investment in juniors and in being able to bring them through into the 1st team. What's flawed is that the RFL don't have rules & regulations in place that force all of the clubs to make a similar investment & commitment
Why should we be proud of what we have done? That emphasis on investment has lead to this dead end. If we develop talent, we will lose it as soon as it gets anywhere.
As a shareholder and very long time season ticket holder, I was happy enough with the model, but it has clearly abjectly failed. We should do the barest minimum required by the RFL and no more - which I assume would be something like having a Borough Academy with Leigh, and ditching all other teams. We have something like 80 employees doing things like public engagement and community engagement.
People are right to laugh at recruitment like this, particularly when it is in large part a product of wasting money on non first team activities. We have something like 15 home grown players in our first team squad. How can that make any kind of sense - the Catalans have shown us the way forward. Some years we don’t even use our full overseas quota! We should be fielding Kasiano, not Smithies.
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Wigan’s main problem is that we invest far too much money in player development, including fielding a women’s’ team. If we ditch that, then we can invest all of our time and energy in recruiting a great first team. We get zero return on investment from, say, Gildart. Our entire business model is completely flawed. It isn’t our purpose to develop players, it is our purpose to win. Our great teams often had virtually no home grown talent. We are not even considered worthy of hosting a World Cup game, so our standing in the game is clearly as low as it has ever been.
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22 hours ago, The Blues Ox said:
Yes because it means we can leave our Northern towns for a holiday to watch the game we love. Fev are not competing against England or GB.
Actually, there are 10s of thousands of tickets sold in the south east, so the point stands even taking into account people coming to London from the North (though it seems to suggest that London is more of a draw than Northern cities?). My point was to illustrate that 1) London is a huge market for our game but that 2) the Broncos is largely irrelevant to that - though there are of course valuable development benefits from having a pro pipeline down here. I for one would have no concerns about Fev being in SL ahead of London. They are a fantastic club.
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6 hours ago, Tex Evans Thigh said:
Only Toulouse and Fev are worthy of promotion at the moment. London will be lucky to be a championship team soon. I know it’s only an Internet forum but people need to get this ‘big city equals big club’ mentality out of their heads. If there’s promotion it should be the clubs that are in the best position to make a go of it.
I have spent a lot of time and money watching the Broncos, and agree that they are never going to be a top club. However, London is still one of the biggest RL markets in the world. SImply look at the 10s of thousands that turn up to event fixtures down here. We can get more to an international than anywhere else aside from OT, in numbers which Fev couldn’t dream of getting over 2 full seasons.
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1 hour ago, JonM said:
The same story is in the Torygraph, the Evening Standard, the Daily Mail and other tabloids, if you prefer your "news" with a right-wing bias.
(I am sorry, but they are unrelated points, entirely. The context and presentation is entirely different - it is an opinion, but only one of a number, and while weight should be given to it, the UK has a massive body of its own evidence to draw upon. To take another example from earlier today, the SA variant is a worry because the vaccines are LESS effective against them - they are still remarkably effective, however. This was presented as the vaccines being INEFFECTIVE in the Guardian. That isn’t politics, that is dangerously ignorant. It suits the “UK’s past, present and future is dreadful” approach, from this once great paper. I still buy it most days, of course. It’s what Andy B would want me to do.
)
Anyway, sorry about the rant, and I respect all and any genuinely held views to the contrary. My point was ultimately a narrow one around the logic behind the position we are taking, and why that is good news for the World Cup, as opposed to 8 months of lockdown or attempting the same thing in the autumn, either one of which approach would have been disastrous to us.
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9 hours ago, Jim from Oz said:
If anything is to derail the RLWC, this will:
This is, at every level, complete nonsense. The former Manchester Guardian’s approach to the UK is essentially to wage war on it, and to corral any anti UK opinion it can find and pass it off as gospel. It is sad to see.
There is compelling logic behind the UK approach - we have high levels of antibodies, we have fantastic vaccines (and it looks as if the Oxford vaccine offers life long protection via T cell stimulation), and we have lead the world in developing treatments for this. We have to have an exit wave to exit this, and the best time to do so is 1) during summer, and 2) while we have a highly transmissible variant against which the vaccines are hugely effective. This variant is keeping at bay the nastier ones. By October/November, Covid will be as much of a risk as a bad flu year - horrific, absolutely tragic - but one which we can and have to live with. As an economy and as a society we cannot choose lockdown and restrictions on people’s ability to be educated and earn a living (or afford to carry on paying for people to be furloughed, as that stores up infinite trouble further down the track).
The timing for the World Cup is pretty much perfect, long enough for the exit wave to fall away (and by some estimates that is already beginning) and prior to any final deep winter pinch point.
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I mentioned this somewhere else, but the best thing that could happen to Wigan would be to get loads of COVID for the next month or so. We keep playing, usually with ridiculous turnarounds, and with a ban happy disciplinary, and so go into every game with injuries and suspended players galore. How hard can it be to get some of our lads pinged???
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As I understand it, we are in the “fortunate” position that we are dealing with a fast spreading version of the virus against which the vaccines work very well indeed. Which makes the strategy of getting through the exit wave and then getting on with life a logical one. So, it looks very much as if we should be in a decent place as a nation come October.
Then we have the huge good fortune that this World Cup was designed to be focussed very narrowly geographically (which annoyed me at the time). Which makes our ability to manage bubbles and the risks associated with them much easier.
On top of that, we have the “Red Wall”/build back Britain political narrative, against which this is an easy win (and I write that as a paid up Burnhamite). We also have, potentially, William and Kate wanting to show they are royals for all. There would be a lot of political capital in seeing this being delivered - it is by definition something that plays to their (please excuse the patronising term) Workington man idea.
It will be more expensive and logistically more challenging, but finding a few more million amidst the billions being spent elsewhere to cover it looks like a very good idea to me.
I simply can’t wait for it.
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One of the side effects of some teams playing more games than others is that if you play actual games you pick up injuries and suspensions.
The ideal position for Wigan would be to take a couple of weeks off, and get some of the walking wounded back.
The first win is always the hardest when coming off a losing run, so I would back us to find a way to win another v ugly game.
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God rest his soul. Too soon.
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Good luck to George (except against us, of course). Never let us down, and kept playing to the end of his contract.
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11 minutes ago, Scubby said:
This probably involves the RLPA in Australia draining money out of the international game (WC profits) to satisfy a few NRL chairman. That's how we get the game to grow
I think the RLPA are good guys in this.
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8 minutes ago, Saint Toppy said:
Your right. Before the pie munchers start getting all excited thinking they're getting Luke Thompson, the Bulldogs have made it clear they want rid of Napa who's one of their big earners but has been a total flop.
You’re having a conversation with yourself at this point. It’s TRL not RedVee.com by the way,
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Rugby League World Cup 2021 (Merged Threads)
in The General Rugby League Forum
Posted
Perhaps Hill has done his own cost benefit analysis?