Remember two of our four overseas quota are out of contract at the end of the season Hicks and Rauhihi and Rau is leaving and will Hicks be offered a new contract ?

And if Monas is homesick then that it could be three.

Tony Smith knows what he is doing. Mathers showed glimpses of his potential when with us before and at the time people were saying that we should try and keep him. At Leeds under TS he played well. So TS knows what he can do and how to get it out of him.

Have faith. Maybe the other teams are worried that TS will get him to perform. Who knows?

Just think if the Pies had kept all their homegrown talent they would be nearly as good as Huddersfield by now

aye thats logical assuming the rumours are correct

don't be thick, you know what i mean, that whole right channel attack, where 99 times out of as hundred it comes off with a try.

No, you don't be thick. We are not talking about someone who earns £70k a season and scores or assists every game. We are talking about someone who I would guess earns at least £150K a season and (given current performance) will not be missed. Bridge can play just as well if not better for far less wonga.

tony smith only wants people at the club who want to play for the club,i'm happy to see gleeson go as he has never been happy and never done enough on a regular basis.
lets see if he still has his sulky demeanour at wigan,when he gets there he might realise how much this club and simon moran indulged him for not much in return.
before people start firing stats up about how many tries his winger gets,what about how many decent balls he's had to put his winger through or how many kicks we used to put out to his wing for henry.
to be honest you can't even say thanks for the memories because they have been few and far between.

My sentiments too. Completely underwhelmed by the deal. Fair enough get rid if he doesn't want to be here but it's not a great deal. One of the best centres in the league for half what we paid and gaining (if that word should be used) Ritchie mathers. Great deal for the pies crap one for us. I remember a couple of years ago Moran actually phoning the gmr phone in denying Gleeson going to Wigan, laughing at the players that were supposedly being offered in exchange (one being Tickle can't remember the other) but it was a better deal then, i don't know what has happened to our negotiation skills.

You have to remember we paid 200k in 2004 when Gleeson was what, 24/25 and at the peak of his game. He's 29 next month with what 1/2 really good years left. How old was Toa when his step deserted him?

He was going in September anyway but for sod all in addition to the fact that he didn't want to stay here, or the TS didnt want him.

IT'S A GREAT DEAL WIRE FANS!

tony smith has full control over who comes and who goes,he did exactly the same at leeds with connolly and adamson,another two players taking big wages and carrying big egos,it didn't do them much detriment did it.

It is now official

£100K + Mathers, good deal for all

Not really...

Why?

Sounds like a good deal when you put it like that

I think you're the one being thick here. If only it was anything like 99 times out of a hundred.

Gleeson had one great season for us, and then the odd good game in the following years. He's had his moments, but I have been generally underwhelmed by Martin during his Wire career. Yes there is a dearth of good centres in the game, and he is still one of the best in SL but to get rid of him now when he's almost 29 is a good bit of business.

I still think we should have got Goulding as part of the deal, Smith could mould him into a top class centre IMO.

its typical wigan, get rid of there young stars for a superstar player who has a couple of years left in him.

i agree with something wires 74 has posted on the goons board, mathers is gonna have to work his rollocks off on over time to win us wire speccies over, it's not just a case of him being nowadays but obviously the bad feeling still knocking about with the king hit.

Mathers is 25.

I cant be bothered trawling through the archives, but i would bet that the people who are moaning about the deal are the ones who have continually moaned about the drinking culture at the wolves and have blamed Gleeson and Briers all the way through. Now we have got rid of one of the main culprits who was a very talented player, things might start to change. We have got a lot of good kids coming through i for one would prefere a role model that will teach the kids good things off the field as well as on it.
Good deal for me also Mathers hasn't lost his talent in the last year it just needs reigniting and Tony Smith hopefully can be the man!!!!!!!!!

fantastic, so let me get this straight, one of the best wing centre combos over the past 5 years in the league in gleeson and fa'afili, and they were both crap.

Gleeson's leaving, and people are saying he was crap, and when fa'afili left, he was crap and only scored so many tries because of gleeson, who as we're all discovering now, is/was crap.


I wish we had a player combination on the left hand side of our attack that was equally as bobbins, i really do.

I'm really concerned about this deal in the fact that we've not got the best out of it.

Gleeson going is irrelevant now he has gone he never showed up on a regular basis and T.S must have seen something he didn't like ,what worries me is we have no in our squad now we need 2 so when are they coming ?????

There's people on this thread that i'll listen all day long too, but they've got me today, just not getting it.

Why is this not a good deal ?

There's many factors,

Financially we get £100k for a bloke that was obviously leaving for the NRL at the end of the year, so effectively on a free.We've never been thrifty as a club, so I don't doubt he'll be given the funds to re-invest.

Smith has set down a marker, for donkeys years we've talked about players treating our club as a doss house, 'player power' and that rubbish, we've cried out for a bloke to come in and overhaul this, we've got it and now folk are getting back on the fence. Gleeson obviously told Smith of his intentions/feelings what you will, Smith has made it happen.

We paid £200k, we got back £100k. So it's what £25k a season if you look at it like that, most teams pay money and get zilch return, hoe much did Leeds get back for Ellis ? We paid £50k for Vinnie, and he's done ten times less than Gleeson ever did. I think we've brokered a good deal, to recoup half of what we paid.

I've loved watching him, I think he's class, but I think he's heartless too. I've never felt he had any affiliation with our club, he didn't attend functions and stuff, he's just 'done his job' in his eyes, no more no less. So in the same way, i'm not too bothered that he's going.

If we have to take a step back to go forwards then so be it, I mean that. We're not obviously that great a team, we're 12th, so having flair obviously doesn't guarantee success. I think Smith is going to try and get 17 hard working, team orientated people on a pitch every week, and when the work ethic, and levels of cconcentration are as they should be, then he'll start to look at adding the nice touches, the flair if you will, but he won't substitute flair for effort & commitment, so unless your going to put that in, you won't play, and he obviously feels we either have the players to put this in now, or we can get them.

PJ said in his interview that folk drop balls in training and stuff, Gleeson strikes you as a bloke that wouldn't fancy training too hard every day. If we're looking for 24/7 proffessionals, he doesn't strike you as one.

Now they have both gone, it was Briers setting them up on a plate, etc....................

A good point. Sometimes tough decisions need to be made: the year before Smith arrived Powell had released Sheridan, Hay and Pratt, at the time that was heavily criticised because Pratt and Sheridan were GB players at the time.

There was an interview online I saw not long ago with Wayne Bennett where he said that he always worked on the rule that its better to get rid of a player a year too early rather than a year too late. Alex Ferguson does the same at United, he's been good at sensing when a player was just over the peak of his career and starting to slip backwards. If Gleeson stayed for the final 18 months of his contract with us I doubt he would have improved on what he had done already, he would probably have sulked for the rest of the time and been a bad influence. Moving to Wigan might up his game for a while, but that doesn't mean its a bad decision for us, because I doubt he would have upped his game if he'd stayed here.

Excellent post, well said that man!

[urlhttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/rugby_league/article6044688.ece[/url

I don't think it's a case of whether Mathers is better than Riley, it's whether Mathers is better than Reardon, and I reckon it's a decent replacement.

Some of the salary cap must have been freed up as well, hinting a replacement for Gleeson.

Gleeson & Reardon out.

Mathers + 100k + extra salary cap in.

= a new centre and more professional players.