Listen she's a WUM. She never has had or ever will have anything positive to say about Wigan RLFC.
She is a "Saddened" Wannabee.

In fact they are welcome to each other.

And me.

"What you don't know you'll never miss."

So it's okay for future stars to leave the game because SaintsFan - who is pretty uninformed even by Saints fan standards - hasn't heard of them ???

Good grief! Talk about conversation over.

Please, please, please stop digging. I'm actually beginning to get embarrassed for you...

The truth is RL can't afford to lose either high profile players or good youngsters. We simply don't produce enough good British players to lose either sort. Just look at our outside backs of recent years. We haven't been raided en masse by Union in part because quite frankly who would you bother spending big money on? Shenton? Ryan Hall? Of the England team of recent years probably only Tomkins and Eastmond in the backs would get a second glance from Union or the NRL.

I think the model Leeds (and Wigan) have started using with respect to young players is a good one. The idea seems to be if they look promising early on, take a risk and offer them a long-term deal with lower upfront costs and higher in later years, but be ready to renegotiate the whole deal upwards if they make it. It means the club is taking a risk by offering a long-term deal to an unproven player (in the case of Hardaker at Leeds, he's signed for 5 years without having played a single SL game); the risk to the player is that the club honours its word to renegotiate the contract upwards if things are working out.

It does suggest a lot of faith in juniors, which hopefully the player will appreciate. It also requires clubs to start thinking about re-signing players long before their contract expires - which should suit both parties. At the very least it maximises the compensation the club would get from union (or the NRL for that matter) if they become really insistent and want to leave.

One other point - every club has plenty of cash to spend on Aussies/Kiwis. They could CHOOSE to spend more of this on youngsters. Most clubs don't.

What, because I agreed with your Chairman, who I presume does know something about your players? If your Chairman isn't worried about the loss of RL players to Union, given that you seem to be the club leaking most of them, then why should I be?

Sorry mate, the conversation's over. After your previous post before this one, you just can't be for real.

That Sale signing this morning wasn't Eastmond. You probably all knew that (someone posted earlier that the Sale site listed that there was a new signing being announced this morning)

Make your mind up

Pretty sure that was yesterday mate.

nowt official yet so its all just rumour . Or am i wrong

that was bath

Think it was Sale mate, took the below from the Sale site.


Tony Buckley Signs For Sharks

Wednesday, February 16th 2011

NEW Sale supremo Steve Diamond has made his first capture since taking up at the reins at Edgeley Park by swooping to capture Irish man mountain, Tony Buckley.

No, because in trying to put your point across in a way that makes you look like you know what you're talking about, you actually manage to achieve the exact opposite. Now I suppose that's a skill in itself, rather like Les Dawson's infamous piano playing, if that's what you intended. Unfortunately we all know it isn't. But hey! carry on digging if you prefer. It does have a certain amount of entertainment value in that uncomfortable, prickly, skin-crawling sort of way...

Yep you're spot on.

I was thinking of Caldwell. Getting confused already with the transfers. I tink it is cause Rugby union is so boring, i can't even focus on when they are stealing our best players .

[uUpdate:[/u viewtopic.php?f=18&t=484691&p=15893150&view=show#p15893150 Quote ="Benidorm John"Royce Simmonds has just announced on Radio Merseyside that Kyle Eastmond is going to Bath, Kyle told all his team mates today at training. Good luck to the lad '"

[uUpdate:[/u viewtopic.php?f=18&t=484691&p=15893150&view=show#p15893150 Quote ="Benidorm John"Royce Simmonds has just announced on Radio Merseyside that Kyle Eastmond is going to Bath, Kyle told all his team mates today at training. Good luck to the lad '"

Eastmond clearly has a number of raw attributes but does he really have a natural 'rugby brain'? Some of his play against Warrington was Denis Moran esque.

If he gets sent off this season, will any of the commentators dare use the phrase: "early bath"?

Saints biggest mistake in all this was not keeping hold of Matty Smith. They let him go without even signing Eastmond on last season. Its rookie stuff to be honest.

good shout that mate! but i think they might have been putting a lot of hopes into there young halves, as they let ellis go to leigh aswell!

Iam not sure about Matty Smith he blows hot and cold he played well in the play offs agaist wire but did nothing in the next two

Ah well not Wigans problem. They all moaned at us for "not trying harder" when we lost ashton so they can swivel atm to be honest. Ok yeah its a shame for England but theres nothing we can do now.

also @Father Jack: I agree he's not always spot on but at least they'd still have a quality half.

This is the only way we can look at it.

Somehow or other - certainly through more astute management than is going on elsewhere - IL has managed to lock our best young talent up in good, lengthy deals. Whether he'll manage to do it indefinitely is another question, but perhaps it's time we stopped worrying about the game in general, and just looked at the positives, which is that Wigan's best young players are staying put (at least for the time being).

Exactly thank god we are a few years from having to worry about this. We also have the quality coming through that we may suffer a lesser blow than Saints if we were to lose someone in this way.

www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sp ... -deal.html

www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sp ... -deal.html

If this is true then it is yet another awful day for RL.

If the reports are correct one of our top players has been lured away for £200k p.a. plus presumably the benefits that may come to him (if he is successful) from a higher media profile.

Its's very worrying that RL cannot pay the sort of money that would make the move to RU too risky for a young player like Eastmond - it's not as if RU have offered him £50k a week...

£200k is the equivalent in real terms of around £120k back in the late 90s. If we'd known at the outset of SL and the SC that we wouldn't be able to pay a top star of the game the equivalent of £120k after a decade and a half of SL then people would have thought the SL and SC experiment to be an utter failure.

Which it is. Our game is in crisis, people need to wake up!