Wigan...an analysis

[Tommygilf]

4 hours ago, yipyee said:

I agree, blabbering on about lads and dads etc make the sport look small time and jobs for the boys and clicky that union used to be accused of.

RL is as 'who you know' jobs for the boys as union is, except they have degrees

[sweaty craiq]

8 hours ago, yipyee said:

Sky want a competition with close games and a decent geographical spread. So do the BBC.

Putting Leigh into the league was a shot in the foot.

A league of 14 with no loop fixtures and no whipping boys is required not the stupid 2 x10 which ultimately reduces the top teams and rebrands the northen ford premiership yet again!

So many still cannot grasp what two tens means, so try to belittle it by reference to previous second tiers for part time clubs. 

Grow FT player pool, a true elite, a genuine recovery room or pit stop, competition, p&r, marketable, 3 genuine end of season areas of interest that Sky enjoy with soccer and RU - Who will win SL1, who will get relegated from SL1 and who will win promotion from SL2. Three genuine games of interest for the run in.

As Derek pointed out CASH is needed but you dont choose to sell your house when prices are low, and we have to go back to sky with a product they value and want, otherwise next time it could be nothing

[yipyee]

23 hours ago, sweaty craiq said:

So many still cannot grasp what two tens means, so try to belittle it by reference to previous second tiers for part time clubs. 

Grow FT player pool, a true elite, a genuine recovery room or pit stop, competition, p&r, marketable, 3 genuine end of season areas of interest that Sky enjoy with soccer and RU - Who will win SL1, who will get relegated from SL1 and who will win promotion from SL2. Three genuine games of interest for the run in.

As Derek pointed out CASH is needed but you dont choose to sell your house when prices are low, and we have to go back to sky with a product they value and want, otherwise next time it could be nothing

You can try to glam it up all you want to, it will still be division 2 and division 1 will have less teams in it.

Is league 1 the same standard as the championship as this is the comparison but moved up 1 level

[The Future is League]

On 22/08/2021 at 18:02, JohnM said:

Manchester Evening News looks at the club.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/wigan-warriors-history-fans-apathy-21367342.amp

Obviously there is something wrong behind the scenes at Wigan which we don't know about and probably never will

[Damien]

Some really informative answers from the fans forum here. Very open and honest and Lenegan and Radlinksi need to be commended for that. As a Wigan fan some of it certainly isn't what I hoped for and is definitely what I had feared:

https://wiganwarriors.com/blog/2021/09/03/fans-forum-the-first-hour/

[Live after death]

11 minutes ago, Damien said:

Some really informative answers from the fans forum here. Very open and honest and Lenegan and Radlinksi need to be commended for that. As a Wigan fan some of it certainly isn't what I hoped for and is definitely what I had feared:

https://wiganwarriors.com/blog/2021/09/03/fans-forum-the-first-hour/

Trouble with Wigan fans is they utterly demand  success and won’t accept  anything other than winning trophies every single year as failure. This is somewhat true if Leeds fans recently or Man U or Liverpool. When any sports  team has had a period of huge success and dominance, fans want this to be the norm. But this is not always the case, see also Olympic cycling and Rowing where the last Olympics was not as much a success as previous 2-4 so its deemed failure, rather than judging it on its own merits. 

[Damien]

32 minutes ago, Live after death said:

Trouble with Wigan fans is they utterly demand  success and won’t accept  anything other than winning trophies every single year as failure. This is somewhat true if Leeds fans recently or Man U or Liverpool. When any sports  team has had a period of huge success and dominance, fans want this to be the norm. But this is not always the case, see also Olympic cycling and Rowing where the last Olympics was not as much a success as previous 2-4 so its deemed failure, rather than judging it on its own merits. 

I don't agree with this. Yes some fans may want a team that's winning trophies, that's like all clubs, but the issues and fans anger are much deeper than that. Wigan have had winning teams before and not great average attendances, winning is only part of the equation. 

[ShropshireBull]

The definition of transparency here. Main takeaway from that is how cancerous it really is for our clubs to be prisoners in someone else´s house. It would be ridiculous to have stadiums next to eachother but if the club now owned by a businessman from a horrific dictatorship is going to keep moving them around maybe Wigan would be better off looking for a way out and copy Saints or Wire. 

[Superb Chops]

2 hours ago, Damien said:

Some really informative answers from the fans forum here.

https://wiganwarriors.com/blog/2021/09/03/fans-forum-the-first-hour/

Thank you Damien. 

An interesting read for the sport generally.

Particularly in terms of the TV deal, opportunities for other broadcasters, Covid impact and loans, plus how much spare salary cap they have (and how much agents of half backs can push for in negotiations with Wigan).

[shrek]

Things with the stadium will settle down, Wigan Athletic seem to have themselves a very popular and well meaning chair, who's very much learning on the job.  I believe he got a little ahead of himself in releasing details of a new contract and "words have been said" for example, so he's bound to make a few more gaffes before he's done.

Whilst I'm sure there's plenty could be done with seats and stadium branding etc, I'm really not sure removing red seats is a big deal amongst the Latics faithful (away from the keyboard warriors!), sounds to me something of a populist move, but given Latics away strip is red and the Bahrain flag is red I'm not sure I see why you'd want to make the change other than for a few cheap likes on social.

Hopefully common sense will prevail and improvements can be made to the DW for the benefit of both clubs.

[Chris22]

Very open from Wigan. I doubt that they are alone in many of the challenges they face.

Interesting that the signing of Thornley announced this way.

Big period coming up for Wigan with Hastings' departure and Hardaker's future up in the air.

Here's the fan Q and A.

https://wiganwarriors.com/blog/2021/09/03/fans-forum-qa-session/

[whatmichaelsays]

4 hours ago, Damien said:

Some really informative answers from the fans forum here. Very open and honest and Lenegan and Radlinksi need to be commended for that. As a Wigan fan some of it certainly isn't what I hoped for and is definitely what I had feared:

https://wiganwarriors.com/blog/2021/09/03/fans-forum-the-first-hour/

Quote

And I’ve always said, we’ll never break the salary cap. That’s not the integrity of a club like Wigan.

Please tell me IL said that with a straight face 

[EastLondonMike]

Well that was a bloody depressing read.

I certainly don’t warm to either IL or KR. Maybe it’s just me but they seem quite deflective.

I don’t hold out much hope for a decent coach coming on board to excite us fans.

[ghost crayfish]

It is an interesting read that highlights the legitimate challenges, but there's also a few "we could have handled that better" type situations too. The fact they didn't legally push George Williams to come back isn't a great look, particularly given they go on to explain all the salary cap benefits they'd get with him! Time and again, they're showing people can walk all over them as they don't enforce contracts. Similar theme came through in how he talked about situations with the soccer club. Just a bit of resignation, weakness, and 'it's all a bit hard'.

Edited September 4, 2021 by ghost crayfish

[M j M]

There's quite a bit of buck-passing and responsibility dodging dressed up as honesty in that.

Looks like something is definitely afoot with Zak Hardaker.

Most remarkable is that they asked people to keep what was said off social media before publishing a word for word transcript on the club's website?!

[Damien]

1 hour ago, M j M said:

Most remarkable is that they asked people to keep what was said off social media before publishing a word for word transcript on the club's website?!

And advertising what was said and the q & a with links to it on Facebook and Twitter! 

[Davo5]

The fact that Leneghan comes out with he prefers winning the Challenge Cup to bring Champions coupled with saying Miski is a great winger & Iain Thornley will be a good signing is my biggest worry.

[Mark S]

£100k salary should be the average for a SL player! 

[Scubby]

30 minutes ago, Mark S said:

£100k salary should be the average for a SL player! 

A$130,000 is the minimum wage for just junior squad players in the NRL. That's £70k - better than quite a few established SL players. No wonder players like Dom Young, Bailey Hodgson and Harry Rushton think it is better to go to Aus as a fringe player than be on £15-20k here. Pryce will probably be the next. 

Edited September 4, 2021 by Scubby

[Exiled Wiganer]

That’s a cracking read. Good on them. I hadn’t quite appreciated how awful Latics have been, but that’s not surprising. Hopefully they’ll go bust again, Danson can spend some of his loose change on a new stadium and they can crash and burn. 
 

The key new bit of info for me was the succession planning - ie all will be well even if we have a few more years of taking a bath. 

[Mark S]

19 minutes ago, Exiled Wiganer said:

That’s a cracking read. Good on them. I hadn’t quite appreciated how awful Latics have been, but that’s not surprising. Hopefully they’ll go bust again, Danson can spend some of his loose change on a new stadium and they can crash and burn. 
 

The key new bit of info for me was the succession planning - ie all will be well even if we have a few more years of taking a bath. 

Saints ground cost £25M, if Wigan wanted a similar size stadium the costs would be much higher. Thanks to Brexit the costs of materials have shot up.

[M j M]

1 hour ago, Exiled Wiganer said:

That’s a cracking read. Good on them. I hadn’t quite appreciated how awful Latics have been, but that’s not surprising. Hopefully they’ll go bust again, Danson can spend some of his loose change on a new stadium and they can crash and burn. 
 

The key new bit of info for me was the succession planning - ie all will be well even if we have a few more years of taking a bath. 

I'm amazed if you're reassured by that. There didn't seem anything concrete about the future, plenty of pretending to take responsibility whilst not really doing so and a lot of wishful thinking.

[Exiled Wiganer]

2 hours ago, M j M said:

I'm amazed if you're reassured by that. There didn't seem anything concrete about the future, plenty of pretending to take responsibility whilst not really doing so and a lot of wishful thinking.

There is two things that matters in a business like ours - can you pay the bills, and can you invest in the team and its coach to the maximum allowed? On both counts we are fine - the Lenaghans will write cheques until the billionaire takes over. 
 

It is an absurdly simple business - get the best possible coach and get entertaining players and the rest looks after itself. 

[Scubby]

21 minutes ago, Exiled Wiganer said:

There is two things that matters in a business like ours - can you pay the bills, and can you invest in the team and its coach to the maximum allowed? On both counts we are fine - the Lenaghans will write cheques until the billionaire takes over. 
 

It is an absurdly simple business - get the best possible coach and get entertaining players and the rest looks after itself. 

Where does Iain Thornley fit into this if you are losing the likes of Jackson Hastings, Oliver Gildart and Zak Hardaker? 

[Exiled Wiganer]

2 hours ago, Scubby said:

Where does Iain Thornley fit into this if you are losing the likes of Jackson Hastings, Oliver Gildart and Zak Hardaker? 

Thornley for Gildart is not an exciting swap, but against that we needed to spend money on some big lads, so the money was better spent on 2 NRL props. We are replacing Hastings with someone, as yet unknown and if we lose Hardaker we will be able to replace him. If Field is any good (and wasn’t he playing in the NRL last year?) and French comes back fit and well, then we will still have some players who can entertain. Tbh, if we lose Hardaker and sign an attacking hooker, that would really lift morale. 

If we had Maguire or Holgate coaching us, or someone else of that calibre, people would come out in bigger numbers again. Those coaches vastly improved the players available, and many of us believe there is a lot of talent in the existing squad,