That was Joe Lydon's idea, I heard, which - not atypically - was a bit of unsophisticated froth. It only had relevance after the relegation fight, and we should now ditch it.

How many times were they chanting there names after a losing performance?

Naturally the crowd are going to be chanting when a player is winning don't confuse the player being extatic with the player being overjoyed by the victory and the occasion.

so each time when we all chanted 'gilly give us a wave' and he stopped, and gave the worlds biggest grin, he wasn't feeling good because of the fans?

Signing of new contracts and extensions for the likes of our half backs have happened since the trip to Australia so the same cap issue may not have been in place when he went. Before you mention Hock's wage I would expect at least some of that to go to improve contracts for Mossop, Farrell etc who will step up to help replace him. Also proportion of cap that one/two players would take up has to be considered for squad depth implications.

Hunt was probably a panicked answer (been in news recently so first name to come to mind) rather than a very serious target. Either way how do you know for sure that a player is beyond your financial means unless you make an enquiry.

You're probably not alone in saying you could understand him mentioning Tronc as a target. Look at IL's comments on returning from Australia. I remember him mentioning two players he had looked at, Mark O'Meley (decided against it) and Ben Hannant (mid twenties rep player so probably one who was too expensive) are both of those FORWARDS realistic enough as proposed targets.

Would you sing it to him were he a poor player?

Would he fail to perform did you not sing it?

I am sorry to burst a bubble the fans generally mean bugger all, we are a deflection.

if a player has the confidence of the coach and his team mates the fans should be 0 in there sphere of influence.

I would suggest that the difference in coach is a major influence on permance nothing to do with the fans.

Given both are coming to Sl next year yes.

Why have we tried to sign Webb, even if he was never going to get a visa?

IFL should not have paniced answers in these situations, again a panic answer smacks of desperation.

God it's a bloody cynical world you live in.

All the players of all the sports who've talked about great atmospheres, being spurred on by the fans, wrote in in their autobiographies etc.

they were all lying b***ards?

thanks for clearing that up then

Pesimism is not the word if you call one knock back an inability to sign a coach.

You enjoy your half empty pint, eh !

No what i am saying is the fans are not a primarry influence, kid yourself all you want but a direct sphere of influence has way more influence than a fan, yet it seems again like the Pirtek deal the fans are being blamed for failures in other aspect of the clubs running.

We haven't even heard your opinion on matters because you've been to busy niggling at other posters, I assume your happy with the answers given are you? As for this other site crap, I've never even mentioned the other site so where your getting that from I have no idea. I'm so sorry I have a different view to you but I was under the impression this was a public forum where people could express there opinions, but I guess you don't get that do you.

jonh
i think you are wrong about the players giving a toss about the supporters ....over the years i have spoken to many players and they DO care that we are at the games....they DO enjoy our singing and shouting for them
they also except that at times we the fans will slate them when things are bad.Thats part of their job.....
what i and many others can not understand is the absolute VENOM that comes from a small section of people on these forums who think they know better....can play better or handle a match situation better than our PROFFESSIONAL players.
yes players have off days but some people to me appear to enjoy that player losing his confidence cos it gives them a stick to beat them with over and over again....even when the player has improved.
when a small section of 'fans' ( although the way the moan about everything about the club makes me wonder if they are true wigan supporters)decide they dont like a player...thats it for him and even if he scored the winning try in the challenge cup they would find something to slag him off for

lets get behind Lenagen and the club...we are moving in the right direction after the terrible way our club was run for years by whelan and co

I couldn't be bothered to say it so I am glad you have.

I may be wrong as i was not there, but it seems we have offered one of the highest profile jobs in the game to 1 person who has turned it down.

We are now in a position that means we are unable to attract another first team coach even for a year to prove themselves.

As i understand it we have offered the position to 2 other coaches who are unable to get a visa, so truth be told we are running with 4th best at best for 2010 if BN stays.

The fact that he is now only asking for a 1 year deal is both a joke and an indication of our failure as a club.

Jesus christ mate, he didn't even say it was a primary influence on them playing badly.

he just said he didn't like it (his personal opinion) and made the fairly logical assertion that it probably didn't help.

Is your association with the team and the sport these days a largely positive or negative experience? because you seem to be getting more negative as time goes on.

I think you can quite rightly be negative about the lack of scouting, coaching etc, but if you're at the point where you feel you're largely not enjoying the product on offer and that the players cynically pocket their money and don't care what the fans think, then I really can't understand why you're still around.

Spoken as a true fan.

I am not one of the boo boys, who slam players but i think if the small minded mugs who do constatntly slate a player regardless of performance affect them then they need to move on to Warrington or Cas or Trinity when the pressure is not so great.

no involvement in the sport but from my experience the players are happy to lap up the support when things are going well, but happy to slate the fans when things are not going well. Thats in all sports that i have been involved in not just rugby.

You start blaming the fans for failures you are up a creak without a paddle from my experience.

You admitted you weren't there, and then, in virtually the sentence, decided that it was a pile of scheizer.

That, to me, is shallow. Whether you like it or not, that stands you in the corner with those malcontents and armchair cynics who have a problem with whatever the club does. It isn't impressive - by any stretch, and that's all I initially said about it.

You want to know what I didn't like about tonight - the lack of clarity on the coaching issue. However, that was the only thing, and it was easy to glean that that Noble, if he gets another contract, will at most be here for one year. That's not good, it's not what we need, but, trying to take a longer view, maybe it's necessary if the guy we really want isn't yet available. It happened in 85/86 and look how that worked out.

The problem is that we fans are still unrealistic in our ambitions. You don't build empires in a day. You can't make omelettes without breaking eggs - all the usual cliches, yadda yadda. But there's an element of truth there. Mo and DW tried to recreate Wigan by chucking money at uninterested Aussies. The great Wigan side was never built on that. We had some good overseas recruits, but most were British lads, and many came through the ranks at Wigan. At present, we're clearly trying to re-seed the team with youth. That's okay by me. I want to see a good signing at some point soon - I know we need a new prop - but there's no reason to assume this won't happen. Gleeson was signed out of the blue. None of the know-alls on the other website had the first clue it was coming.

At the end of the day IL is a slick businessman. He sells for a living. He's clearly good at it, and yes, it makes you wonder if he's all front. But I'm not prepared to write the Wigan admin off yet. At least they have these forums. They've pulled great crowds in this summer despite the recession. We're looking forward to an epic CC semi. All is not crap in the Wigan RL garden despite the pontificating of CP Wigan and his yes-men.

That's the feeling I've had all this week. I went into tonight's meeting, and nothing I heard changed that view. We need a new coach - very, very clearly, but that will happen in the near future. I didn't expect it to be announced tonight given that the semi is only a few days away.

I wasn't meaning to have a go at you personally. But some times this rampant negativity is ridiculous. People don't hear what they want to hear, and immediately decide that it means everthing's gone pear-shaped. Let's look at the reality and get a bloody grip.

very good post.

Great post cruncher. I was unable to make it tonight but instead of reading through all these pages I think that will do for me. Things are not as good as they could be at Wigan, we want to be making profit and winning trophies, but things are not as bad as some make out and certainly not as complicated as some make out.

Yes you can that's the point!! AND those of us that think you are out of order that you have gone too far can tell YOU that's what WE think!

Answer my question John - WHAT GOOD DOES IT DO?

And as I have said I am not talking about criticising players performance!! I am talking about the consistent abuse a small number of fans give certain players every day!!

At the very least it's boring.

I was very impressed with IL last night.

My impression last season was that he was personally trying to do everything at the club & didn't have the support in place - he now has the likes of Mick Hogan, Simon Collinson etc as part of his management team and I believe that the club is in very good hands going forward.

Some highlights from last night (apologies if some have already been covered) were:

- We are currently looking at a £150k loss for the season, although a Wembley appearance is worth £250k, so we could be looking at a £100k profit,

- Lenagan's (& the RFL's) clear priority going forward is developing high quality young players,

- At present, we have signed no new players for next season. Wigan had looked at around 6 props and various other overseas players - £150k a year ago equated to around Aus$400k, it is now worth Aus$295k. Because RL is so popular in Australia, many of the top aussie players have lucrative media and promotional contracts, which they cannot get in the UK, therefore, making it more difficult to attract them. Lenagan did due dilligence on a number of players and decided that there were negative issues attached that meant that they were not worth the outlay or risk. Certain other club's lack of due dilligence may have interesting results. IL did state the obvious, that with Feka and Fielden off-contract at the end of the 2010 season, there could be a huge wedge of SC money available to sign props (IF Feka and Fielden were not re-signed),

- Before Mick Hogan came to Wigan, the club did not have a Foundation scheme (linked to work in the community etc). We now have - Warrington have 24 fulltime staff attached to theirs and it is worth £1m per year to their club! Part of the community work involves links to an Educational Academy, where Wigan are looking to have a RL Centre of Excellence at which the U18s and U20s will train etc.

- Sponsorship - Wigan have signed up 5 new sponsors in the past 12 months......Mecca Bingo, UCLAN, Warburtons, Ashton, Wigan & Leigh PCT plus 1 other. We are at an advanced stage in negotiating for the major shirt sponsor for next season, with Mecca being one of the companies that we are negotiating with. Not having this sponsorship in place pre-Christmas (& the lack of the JJB Sports pipeline) seriously affected our ability to shift shirts, with around 8k being sold this season compared to the expected 16k - although a Wembley appearance this season will help to address this! Since Wigan signed up Mecca, around 50% of SL clubs have also contacted them about sponsorship,

- Scouting - I won't repeat the Chorley Panthers scenario that was very well put as a question to IL (I know that it is covered earlier in this thread). IL agreed that scouting needed to be improved, but that over the past 12 months it had not been a priority owing to everything else at the club,

- Quins - IL still owns 65% of the shares at Quins, but has no active interest whatsoever in the club, although a soft spot for them. He is trying to sell the shares,

- Individual players - IL would not comment on individual players (questions were asked about Pryce, Fielden etc) other than to say that he believed that, with recovery and conditioning, Pryce could turn out to be a world class player and that he hopes that Fielden will perform well over the remainder of this season and next),

- Fanbase - No decision has yet been made on season ticket prices for next season (Hudds slashed the price of season tickets by 50%, but this only resulted in a 3% increase in attendances!). Mick Hogan outlined that Wigan intend to target youngsters ("the next generation of life-long Wigan fans"icon_wink.gif. He quoted an interesting statistic that I won't quote on here to avoid trolling (if you are a Wigan fan, PM me if you want to know!),

- Partnership with an Aussie NRL club - Wigan expect this to happen in the next 12 months & are trying to attach Mark Flannagan to a club for the next 12 to 24 months, hoping that he will then return to Wigan. The idea is to loan young players between the clubs as part of their development, with Wigan's young players being able to play Toyota Cup or even NRL - I had to laugh at the guy sat behind me who shouted "tell them to loan us Lockyer"



- Salary Cap - IL was asked if we had the same SC as other clubs owing to their recruitment. He outlined how HMRC now have an interest in RL clubs use of image rights & overseas payments and maintained that Wigan "won't cheat",

- There is a press release today about the new loan system between clubs for U18s and U20s next season (new rules for loans between SL and Championship clubs).

- Coaching - IL was very complimentary about Brian Noble and outlined that the two of them worked together very well. He outlined that he expected Wigan to win trophies, that no decision had been made on BN for 2010 (Noble wants a 1 year deal) and that both Wigan and BN were exploring options, which included re-signing BN for another year. This is just MY take on the matter - don't be surprised if we have a new coach for next season...............it is clear that IL wants someone to take Wigan (& our young players) to the next level.

The 'banter' at the start of the questioning was with a guy who owns a Fisheries (poster on the other board?) and was over the interpretation of the term "afford" in relation to signing top notch props.

Well said Elli, as above mostl of the time I cant be ar$ed getting into "discussions" with some posters on here, I think you have voiced the opinion of most loyal supporters well said again!

If we are speculating it causes them to perfrom poorly, i could very well put it to you that a player uses it as motivation to improve and hence prove them wrong.

I do not agree with the opinion of that small minority generally nor with the way they express there opinion, but to use it as an excuse for poor performance smacks of smoke and mirrors and reminds me of the Pirtekgate all over again.

So in conclusion. A modest amount of information was gleaned as expected. Those who turned up wanting to find fault found fault. Those who turned up wanting to hear good stuff heard good stuff. And those who just wanted to get out on a Wednesday night had a pleasant evening laughing at the stupid questions. Move along the bus, please.