Exiled Wiganer
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Posts posted by Exiled Wiganer
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5 minutes ago, ELBOWSEYE said:
Cameron Smith was not a bums on seat player. But was not just world class but an all time great. I think your getting the two area's mixed up.
No I am not, I very clearly set out my test and then applied it. I wouldn’t take my kids to watch Cameron Smith play as their first game, as what he does is prosaic and admirable rather than entertaining. I would rather show them Clark, or would have rather shown them Cunningham in his prime, as you only need to watch them for a few minutes to realise how hard but exciting our game can be.
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9 minutes ago, M j M said:
Two points from the above -
Wigan haven't been much in the entertainment business since Michael Maguire pioneered anti-Rugby. That's something the club can address with its coaching appointments as much as anything else. Reappointing Wane as it seems they've done isn't going to fix that although it may put a bit of backbone into the team.
Secondly I think you need to ask exactly why it is that Wigan academy products appear to want to leave the club more often than their contemporaries at the other big clubs. Of course you're going to struggle to build a dominant team whilst that keeps happening. The NRL will be appealing for some for sure but there doesn't seem to be much on the other side of the equation that makes players want to stay. And that to me suggests some sort of cultural issues at the club.
You may be right, on both counts, but my central argument remains the same - the only thing that should matter to Wigan Rugby League Football Club Ltd is first team success, and employing dozens of people to do “development” seems (purely from where I am sitting) to be at best draining resources to no ostensible benefit, and at worst leading the club on a downward spiral. The bottom line is that we would get far better crowds if we had star overseas players in a winning or even entertaining side than fielding the dozen home grown “god loves a trier” players we currently have. Looking over the Hill, I don’t remember Scunthorpe and Long having gone to Cowley...
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If the test of a great player is whether they can do something which makes us gasp with amazement, then I can only think of one box office player in SL, and that’s a fit Tom Johnstone. I can’t think of a single current SL player who would get into a best of SL team. That said, all of the players mentioned above are good players, and Clark in particular is very watchable, they are just not so good that I would go out of my way to buy a ticket to watch them as a neutral.
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2 minutes ago, M j M said:
I thought you were on a wind up the first time you posted this. But apparently not
It is a simple enough argument - a club who can field an Ellery Hanley will inspire more people to watch in person, and on the TV, and to become involved in the game than any number of one week training camps lead by, with respect, well meaning sporting nobodies.
I have only been following Wigan for 40 odd years, but I have relatives who have been following us for over 80 years, and love our club to bits. And who inspires them - Billy Boston, Jim Sullivan, Martin Offiah, Brett Kenny, and the greatest of all, Ellery. None of them Wiganers.
Watching these players is what inspires people to join clubs, buy boots, throw a ball around. I don’t wish to denigrate the well meaning efforts of many associated with the club, but they are wasting everyone’s time and millions of pounds if they think that the best way forward is for Wigan to develop Academy players, for them to leave as soon as they get the chance. Ferguson and Kenny were here for barely a full season between them, but they left an indelible mark on the club and its supporters. We are in the entertainment business, and we aren’t doing any entertaining.
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5 hours ago, Jim Prendle said:
I honestly can't tell if you are being ironic or not, but if you aren't then you need to give your head a wobble.
I've seen first hand the community stuff that Wigan do in the area, and it is outstanding. Many of the kids who take part in these initiatives are from deprived families and the club is the only place that educates them, keeps them fit and in many cases even feeds them. Its the only place that these kids get to feel part of something.
IIf you think they should stop doing that and invest in expensive foreign imports instead, then I suggest you have that badly wrong.
I don’t have it badly wrong, and am astonished you find my suggestions egregious. The Wigan’s club’s purpose is to field the best first team they can, not to do “good deeds”. We are not a school, we are not a youth club, we are not a charity, and should stop pretending to be one. The RFL or the schools or the clubs can do the good deeds, every penny we generate should focus on one goal and one goal only - where do we get the players and the coach who will make us the best first team we can be. We have around £7.5m turnover, which is plenty enough to recruit and retain an excellent coach and a strong first team.
And if we ditched the salary cap, and tapped up our billionaire, we could have much bigger crowds again - and many of those who went would be inspired to take up and follow the game.
Tell anyone who sat through Friday’s game how happy they ought to be about the community initiatives, and see how you get on.
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40 minutes ago, redjonn said:
I guess your correct from a competitive team with the others in SL but will that bring in the fans and increase the attendances significantly.
Personally, I think Wigan have completely taken their eye off the ball as a business. As a (minuscule) shareholder, I am amazed and saddened that we are turning ourselves into a youth club rather than a club that aspires to greatness; the club was created for the purpose of fielding a strong first team, and the spectators know what that looks like. As I have mentioned elsewhere, this administration seems to believe that spending millions on community initiatives and developing our home grown talent (whom we happily let go as soon as they do well) is a sensible model.
That has never been the Wigan way before - thousands of Wigan people will pay to watch Brett Kenny play, with respect only his closest family and friends ever paid to watch Martin Foy.
They just need to look at the approach that has worked for decades - people want to be entertained, not see a glorified Academy side, and don’t care where they come from. We had Kenny for half a season but his performances inspired years of followers. A Jamie Lyon or Ben Barba would put thousands on the average overnight. If we want to get people through the door, campaign to ditch the salary cap, ditch all the “development” initiatives - that’s the RFL’s job, not ours - and get in whoever we can from wherever we can.
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58 minutes ago, corvusxiii said:
I wasn't going to comment as it would be a largely miserable moan with no redeeming features. I've no idea why I thought this would be unacceptable.
So, about 25, 30 years ago? Cas beat Wigan in a league match. The report in the Rugby Leaguer? consisted of 4 paragraphs over half a page. Cas didn't get a mention in the report till halfway down the third paragraph.
And here we are today talking about a team who lost the GF in the last moments of the game who are currently 4th in the table.
I'd like to think the game was stronger than this but then again I am mostly grumpy these days.
I agree entirely. We get a disproportionate amount of attention from the press. Change the coach, field some big lads and we will be fine.
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On 20/08/2021 at 22:42, ATLANTISMAN said:
Well done Warrington Wolves:) Having missed out on the match last night after the trip up from Kent it was disappointing but nice to see the kids enjoying themselves today excellent community club.
Just back from the Wigan Warriors v St Helens match we left early our 12 year old is autistic and the language where we were sitting was so bad my wife pleaded with me to go after after half time, we all know passions can run high but when they are grown men (Who have been in the VIP area and had a nice pre match) using the F word every other second its a bit too much bear when your have children with you.
I have lots of respect for Wigan however my observation tonight is that they have a huge image problem locally in being able to attract families to me it was without doubt mainly an older fan base.
Oh well off to Hull tomorrow:)
Paul
I am sorry you found it like that. In my 45 years of going, and many hundreds of matches as a child and taking kids there, I have never experienced circumstances like you describe. I have come across similar scenes at other grounds, indeed many of my friends and family would never attend matches in Warrington. Like you, I have lots of respect for Warrington.
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3 minutes ago, Wollo Wollo Wayoo said:
When does Child retire.?
When Man ready.
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2 minutes ago, ShropshireBull said:
Reducing crowds, ageing fanbase and infrastructure that makes the product look awful on tv lowering the money we can get?
No. They are the same.
We have plenty of latent support, but have deliberately gone down a route which ignores why they came in the first place. We have plenty of juniors and schools playing our game, and plenty of younger fans. As for the “look”, I will give you that, though I am sure Sky would love to see Huddersfield and Salford’s grounds so full. For what it’s worth, I prefer the set ups at Saints and Wire, but we have had no say in where we play, and are unlikely to do so any time soon.
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51 minutes ago, Spidey said:
All clubs in the game are experiencing a decline. It’s sheer arrogance that you think it doesn’t apply to Wigan
It’s not arrogance at all. It’s arrogance to accuse me of arrogance, but I will let you off. Wigan and Leeds’ positions are entirely different from others, and should be treated as such, in my opinion. We have clearly all the latent support we need, it is simply a question of how to appeal to that latent support again. The problem for pretty much everyone else is how to appeal to new potential spectators. I would love everyone to have Wigan’s “problems” - a great schools and junior network and generations of deep love for the institution that is our club. Our “problem” with crowds isn’t about raising awareness, it is because we have implemented a ridiculous business model which is both ruinously expensive and entirely self defeating.
When Wigan’s crowds grew from the 4K who watched when I started to the regular 15k crowds they did so off the back of recruiting and fielding box office attraction players. And would return as soon as we have box office players again. The only lesson to be learnt from that is don’t waste money trying to build a home grown team and ditch all these “community” initiative distractions. You can learn far more of general application to the rest of the game by looking at the likes of York, London, Barrow and Newcastle for do’s and don’ts rather than Wigan’s micro climate caused by over entitled triumph or disaster fans.
Looking at it another way, there have been occasions when the overall average at SL games was at or near 10k. Which was nice, but those averages were usually inflated by the 3 very well supported SL sides - Wigan, Leeds and Bradford: scratch the surface and there were already plenty of clubs within that pyramid which were getting far less than break even crowds.
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1 hour ago, ShropshireBull said:
The whole thread is about that. Its a game wide trend of which Wigan, known as one of the games biggest teams, is sadly an example of.
I would argue that Wigan’s crowds tell us very little about the wider game. There are lots of things we can do, as I mentioned in my post, which are specific to us rather than symptomatic of other issues. Our circumstances are unique - you can’t learn anything from Wigan’s challenges which would help with solving the issues as Huddersfield, Salford, Trinity etc.
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20 hours ago, Old Frightful said:
Got a message earlier saying it was on seriousaboutrl.com but can't see it now. Might have been boĺlicks but didn't have time to check.
Apologies.
No problem - as it happens, we should have taken the 24 point loss last night and given ourselves the night off, thus avoiding more injuries and suspensions…
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Wigan got the biggest crowd of the season last night despite having given nobody any reason to suppose that there was a genuine contest on the way. The day Saints “only” get 16k again is a long way away.
As far as Wigan’s business model is concerned, as I mentioned in the match thread, all of our efforts should go into the first team, and buying overseas players and an overseas coach. We spend millions on community initiatives, and want to run multiple teams. A complete waste of time and money.
Ditch all that, and we can do very well on 10k crowds. Which is still of course more than pretty much every other club whose fans post dozens of “woe is me, look at Wigan’s tiny crowds” posts on here.
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There isn’t much wrong at Wigan that a good coach can’t fix. There are a few other things that need looking at:
- we spend far too much on player development and community activities. The first team is all that matters. We have around 40 staff doing things like supporting other teams and going round trying to get people to play. That’s not our job. Picking all these home grown players is a waste of time and effort - if they are good they will get picked off in any case;
- make sure we sign more and better overseas players;
- make sure we sign the best overseas coach available;
- if we are going to have a thin and young squad, skip games like everyone else. Just find some failed COVID cases, pass them off and put your feet up. At this rate we will have played every round while other clubs have sensibly given themselves 5 or 6 weeks off. It’s bad enough having to play bigger sides when we’re fresh, it’s madness trying to play them when we are tired; and
- canvass to get rid of the downward spiral salary cap. With the money we save from useless do goody initiatives, we could be signing talent.The great Wigan teams I saw got by on hardly any home grown players. We aren’t an academy we are a first team.
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33 minutes ago, Old Frightful said:
Wire awarded the points.
Should be or have been, mate?
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51 minutes ago, The Rocket said:
Not totally true for all the Aussies, Jason Ryles was so thrilled to be picked for Australia that he said he`d play the series in Afghanistan if he had to.
Different times... Could you ever imagine any future Australian players being bothered in the slightest about playing for their country?
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Wigan have got the personnel to win, if we can work hard enough and play fast enough to overcome our midget forwards. Essentially reprise what worked at the end of last year.
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Meanwhile Wigan play again tonight and then next Wednesday and then on 30th. With the inevitable injuries and suspensions. While these 2 put their feet up. We aren’t playing in the same competition by this point. It is absolutely ridiculous. There is simply no point to it.
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This should be cross code.
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One clear disadvantage we face is that we have played a ridiculous number of games. And despite that, we are supposed to back up again on Wednesday. It is a complete farce. We lose players to injury through exhaustion and suspension because you can only be suspended while playing, while the likes of Warrington and HKR pick and choose when they play and put their feet up for weeks. We might actually be a talented side, with some superb young players ready to shake up the competition, but we will never know as long as we play every 48 hours against much fresher teams. It’s a joke.
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We have a predatory competitor, whose vision is to cherry pick all and any of our best players, ensure they can’t play internationals, and play literally by their own rules. We can keep doing what we’re doing, and slowly die a death, or we can try and change things, The only things I can think of are 1) develop the French competition, and 2) ditch the salary cap/double it/add a minimum spend. The NRL is a far greater threat to our game than anything even union has come up with, as we willingly collude in our own demise, while the players are (more or less) playing the same game. If we want people to be inspired to play and watch games in the NH, we have to dig in and fight back.
It was not ever thus, and we have faced bigger challenges in our time. We have the greatest game, which is the only reason we have survived this long. At least we know where we stand, and the bar at which survival will be set.
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17 hours ago, John Drake said:
Quick note to all concerned in this thread.
If you think someone is a troll, put them on ignore. Never respond to them. At all. Ever. Certainly don't divert the thread into a discussion all about them, rather than the topic at hand.
There is nothing guaranteed more to annoy a genuine troll and drive them away than steadfastly ignoring them.
By using the ignore feature on here, you don't even have to see their posts at all, so ignoring them involves no effort of willpower.
However, it his worth pointing out that someone expressing a strong opinion contrary to your own does not, in itself, constitute trolling.
If the comment is on topic, and does not contain personal abuse or foul language, however annoying it might be to your sensibilities to read, it isn't really trolling and we cannot ban someone for it.
If you see any posts which are deliberately off topic, or do involve personal abuse, or attempts at foul language, then please report them. And as is always our advice, do not respond to them.
Now, back on topic.
Thanks.
Am being slow here, but as this thread has become completely trollified, how do I ignore them again (can’t seem to work that out from my phone)?
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1 hour ago, Davo5 said:
Will Pryce
Thanks. It is a tragedy for him to be lost to the game, particularly when developed by a club whose owner has deep pockets and could pay more. He looked really promising. Maybe he will return once he gets bored of years of zero COVID lockdowns.
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Wigan...an analysis
in The General Rugby League Forum
Posted
I won’t quote EEP, as it was such a long post, but I am not convinced by the central thrust. The club’s problems - as clearly identified - are a direct result of believing that there is an inherent advantage in developing and relying on our own players. That has been the club’s focus, and it has lead to massive disinterest and an unfair reliance on players who are simply not good enough simply because we “developed” them. We are getting the wrong answers because we are asking the wrong questions - the only question the board should ask is how can they get star players on the field. Forget where they come from. Every hour spent on anything else is an hour wasted. I am not suggesting that we ditch our Academy entirely, though I would be happy enough with a Wigan Borough approach, but that we should instead invest in the first team’s success instead of carrying out “community” development, or other non first team activities.
I agree that marketing needs to be improved, but it’s far far easier to do that if you have star players to sell. You can have as many fancy dress themed game nights as you like, but Wiganers will only come out every week to watch players like Amos Roberts rather than Liam Byrne. Ditch everything non core, invest in the best possible coach, and entertaining stars, and then market them. We have plenty of resources to do all of that, but are deliberately choosing to try to sell an Academy side as first team for a major club. And fewer and fewer people are being fooled by it.
Incidentally, I think this is a mistake the whole game is making - wasn’t it Hearn who looked at us as a sport and concluded that we had no stars? He was dead right.
With the NRL having cut off the rest of the world, and seeing us solely as a feeder league, and union having left us far far behind, then, unless we as a club and a game aim high again, we are toast as a sport.