Never a truer word spoken in jest? I actually agree with this move HH can be bettered with a realistic replacement as he isnt a top 5 player. Maybe you have some other radical ideas?

What you mean bring in another marquee player to replace him

You mean someone who has scored 597 points in the NRL? or is it 600 points that defines marquee?

Only if he has two dodgy knees and at the end of his career!

Andy Farrell has scored more than that. Should we get him to dust off his boots as well?

For one Bowen doesnt kick conversions, secondly this is the NRL, its nothing like playing Warrington, Oldham and Paris SG every week of the mid 90s. But you wouldn't know how good the NRL competition is because you dont watch it.

I am sad to see Tomkins go as he is very good to watch and players of his talent are rare in this country. As a replacement, Bowen is still very good.

Good luck against Leeds on Friday night.

And chairmen who are seemingly content to do nothing about it.

IL's approach looks to be to end up a big fish in a small pond. He doesn't see losing Sam as bad for SL or Wigan (apparently according to an article in the Observer). Why not? Well in a nutshell he seems to think all the top players will eventually be in the NRL or playing RU so we can survive by replacing them from the production line.

This will be good enough despite any good ones we do produce being picked off by the NRL because when all the decent players currently left in the league have retired we will be best placed to remain at the top of what will be a mediocre competition due to our production line and re-signing veteran ex-Wigan, ex-NRL players after a retirement package.

Gone is the ambition to bring the best players to Wigan or so it seems.

Now you can say that is a pragmatic approach to the problems the game faces or a defeatist approach. I think its a defeatist approach and instead of IL voting against increases in the cap or asking why would he want to pay players more I'd rather see him say things like we can't do that now but are working to increase income to the sport so we can. He's not though and in fact seems dead set against it. Everything is rosy because he thinks we can be top of a pile of mediocrity. A semi-professional future for the game beckons in my opinion.

If Hansen went to Salford at the end of next season we wouldn't get anything as he's out of contract. He may well go. That would hardly be a disaster as we are not short of back rowers.

As far as I'm concerned Ian Lenagan has done the best deal he can for Wigan RL. The new reality is that 75% of players would go to Union or the NRL if they had a chance. So the players Union tells us.

IL is ring fencing Wigan's finances by signing our best players on long term contracts, not to stop them going as he has always known he can't but to ensure he has a legal right to compensation. He has exacted that to an astoundingly successful degree.
It is suggested that Wigan RL will get £700k for Sam, £100k for Mossop and £250k for Hock. That's over £1m for players , apart from Hock, who wanted to play in the NRL. OK so that will probably arrive over the years of the player's contract. That's still far bettter than Saints got for Graham and Eastmond and what we got for Ashton, which of course was sod all!

Some have asked as to where's the money going, well perhaps to pay off some of the club's debts. Can't find my copy of the 2011 accounts but in 2010 we had £ms of debts. 2012 Accounts aren't available yet, not to me anyway.

As to Lenegan pocketing the money himself, well as yet he hasn't paid himself anything as Chairman and Owner of the club. If he paid himself £100k then it would be less than half Nigel Wood is getting and there's no comparison as to the ability and business acumen of the two men. He has also invested heavily in facilities like Central Park, Orrell training Ground, South Wales and is improving the scouting system.

A lot of mention has been written on here as to how IL has handled the Sam business and what he has or has not said.
What is significant to me is that when he first bought the club and had a fans forum at the Deanery he said he aquired the club to win trophies.
Either at that meeting or a later one he also said that having a profitable club was an important part of securing Wigan RL's future. Well, he's acheived both those targets. Maybe his next is to have a debt free club.

I do think that all the critisism of Ian Lenagan is unfair.
He has brought a winning culture to the club, trophies every year right now.
The club is making a profit and heading towards being debt free if not there already. That lot is sporting utopia!

Sam is a fabulous player and the best we've seen for a very long time. We've also seen some other very good players leave.
All this is part and parcel. As for my attitude, it's brought about by my experiences of watching Wigan RL.
When I started following the club mid/late fifties Eric Ashton was the captain. He was the captain of Wigan, Lancashire, Great Britain and a World Cup winning captain. When Eric rertired around 1969/70 I thought the Wigan Rugby League world was about to end. Also with Billy going about the same time.
After that, well, players come and players go, Sam came through the academy and is going. Nothing though, but nothing compares to losing Eric and Billy within a year or so, absolutely nothing!

Lenagan is around my age, if not my age and will have seen the same games, players, finals, trophies as me. Maybe he and I have the same attitude, players come and players go, so do Club Chairmen.
As we all say and believe, no one person is bigger than the Wigan RL. No one!
Ian Lenegan is securing the future of Wigan RL more than any of us thought possible and far better than most of his predessors.
Well Done Mr Lenegan and Thanks.

A great post

The more we talk the game down , the more it will slide

If the rah rahs can talk up a e sport, then surely we should be talking up our truly wonderful sport

Come on folks, give it a go

Someone has spoken the TRUTH! How dare you do such a thing.

Btw don't expect the majority of the idiots frothing at the mouth to even acknowledge 90% of what you said. They either have a blinkered agenda or they are far too stupid to comprehend things outside of their little world/bubble.

Lenegan as you said has brought trophies, stability and financial security to Wigan. That's his job and he's been excellent at it.

It's quite bewildering how some people - at least from their posts in the last couple of days, and from some made previously - don't seem to consider these three aspects important. It really beggars belief as to what they want from their club.

And this post does ?

We were talking about whether or not abolishing the Salary Cap would save the game. It won’t if there isn’t enough money in the pot to pay for it.

Sulkily saying ‘Okay let’s sell our players instead’ … adds nothing whatever to the debate, because we’ll be selling more than our players if we finish up with a league consisting of Wigan, Salford, Warrington and Leeds. That’s the crisis the game is facing – the SL doesn’t have enough money to sustain itself as things are without throwing ourselves open to NRL-type salary demands.

Some people, it seems, still don't get it.

The SC is not the only thing wrong with the management of RL. There are so many things wrong with the way the sport is run that it's difficult to know where to start. The SC is however as good a place as any. THe SC reflects wider issues and problems in the game - lack of ambition, a failure to grasp what a real system of financial controls would look like, envy amongst some people in the RL world that some players might make significantly higher wages than they do, a desire on the part of club owners to reduce pay in real terms. The SC makes many of these problems worse.

The SC is a failure, it has failed to level the playing field significantly, it has failed to provide financial stability, it has seen increasing numbers of players leave the game. To those who say we cannot afford to pay more, the only answer is that we have to find ways of doing so or the SL will become a semi-pro league more like the French championship than what we think of as top flight RL. This is because the SC era has seen appalling financial performance to the extent that clubs cannot afford to pay much more than the SC (and some clubs can't afford even to spend the full SC). Inflation has eroded the real value of the SC by more than 30%. Inflation will continue to chip away at the real value of the SC until the game goes semi pro.

What we need is a rigorous system of financial planning and monitoring. The pro SC brigade still like to pretend that there are only two options, scrap the cap (or raise it to unaffordable levels) or the status quo, when there is obviously a third option - introducing a better system.

Also when people talk about the risks of not having the current cap in place they not only forget that we could have a better system, they also forget that the risks involved in not doing anything are massive.

I absolutely agree with the bit I've underlined. I've never been a fan of the salary cap per se, and I totally believe that it was introduced to peg Wigan back - not to even the playing field, but specifically to undermine a Wigan club who had just acquired a very rich owner in Dave Whelan - and I'd be strongly in favour of moderating it so that those who really try to contribute to the game get rewarded. I'd also be dead keen to hear about any realistic and constructive alternative - I genuinely would, as I too believe that drastic action is now necessary to save us.

However, the exchange of views I engaged in earlier was in response to a rather spurious accusation that IL, by voting to keep the Salary Cap, was responsible for the game's decline (which frankly was no more than a flimsy attempt to cast yet more aspersions on him). The situation is nothing like that simple. If anything, I'd argue that IL's attitude is actually in response to the game's decline.

Until we find ways to pay more, as you yourself say, it could be that clubs have no option but to maintain the Salary Cap as it is because they can see how parlous the game's financial state is. Their chairmen are much closer to the books than we are, and they know who can and can't afford to compete. If there are lot more who can't than can, then we are in real trouble.

The other problem is that, even if we had an unlimited cap, what kind of fees would seriously be required to keep the likes of Sam away from the new-look NRL? Not only would we need to improve on the massive cash they can flaunt, but we'd have to make it worth his while to remain in our failing competition and stay away from the Sydney lifestyle and a league which now really is the best and most exciting in the world, and where British players are at last getting respect on a national stage. You can imagine the field-day the likes of Sam's agent would have if he could ask for anything he wanted.

It's a nightmarish mess, but to lay it at the door of the Wigan chairman because he cast one of several votes to keep our cap at a manageable level is a bit ridiculous.

Has he damaged the game by letting Sam go? Maybe. I think all losses of great players damage the game - the NRL is a much bigger problem for us than Union ever was, because players defecting to the NRL maintain respect - but it may also be that by allowing Sam to go a year early, we're in a better position to keep others. It's all about balancing the books and not getting into debt - even with no cap, we'd have that consideration.

Maintain respect? Not sure what you mean here.

Sam is a RL player, way more suited to RL than RU (though imo he will go in the future to try it out)

Josh would fit into RU like a glove and I can see him going very soon.

No-one is laying all the blame for the CC at the feet of IL, that would be silly.

HOWEVER, he did vote for the status quo so must share some of the blame.

As DeanoG says the CC is symptomatic of the attitude of the RFL in general.

No arguments from me on the underlined bit.

By maintaining respect I meant they don't get the criticism for taking a soft option (whether deserved or undeserved).

IL voted to keep the salary cap at the level it is because most clubs don't spend it anyway and the divide between the top and the bottom would have been even greater. He has criticised the RFL on numerous occasions with regards to us losing players to the NRL/RU but I guess you would have to listen to what he actually says in full rather than find the bits you dislike and run with them.

On the Tomkins move BTW, I have a feeling he'll play at 6 for the Warriors with Tommy moving to 9 to replace Nathan Friend (who I THINK is leaving) and Locky staying at full back.

Can't see him being too happy to be a sub and he's far too talented for that so unless they sell him (which again I can't see) then there isn't much room for him. A 9, 7, 6, 1 of Leuluai, Johnson, Sam and Locke has me pretty excited though as a Warriors fan.

Agreed. As pointed out, the "level playing field" excuse clearly hasn't worked, and in my view a return to the original concept of "50% of income" (or similar) should be reintroduced; applied retrospectively, so that, for example, 2012 income determines 2013 allowed expenditure, and so on.

Is that right? I thought they did. Didn't London even manage to spend up to the cap this year?

Most can't afford too and when they try they end up in financial trouble. Why would we raise it?

London pay their players more due to the cost of living as mentioned in another thread by FT.

got a year extension but i believe your correct that he's going to be interchanging with tommy.

It wouldn't be a disaster because he will have fulfilled his contract and given us value for money. It would be a shame if he left as I am sure he will have plenty left in the tank and I'd like to think we would try and retain his services. Not sure what H has got to do with the Tomkins situation though.



He has done nothing new at all here. Ever since the contract system came in we have given players long contracts and others not so long. We have plenty of players currently on short contracts such as Taylor and Burke. Why aren't these and others on five year deals if his contracts are designed in the way you say?





Sants enjoyed the services of Graham and Eastmond for the duration of their contracts. I am pretty sure Graham was on a long contract anyway and Saints simply chose not to sell him early and cash in.



This is only to be expected. It's his job.



I don't see why you link how he's handled the Sam situation (poorly) to what he said when he first bought the club except to deflect criticism. It's not black and white that he is all good or all evil. He gets some things right and some things wrong. He's handled the Sam situation badly but that doesn't mean the new CP is a poor idea, nor does the new CP mean we should dismiss how he's handled the Sam situation.







Sorry but the fact other players leave has got nothing to do with the circumstances Sam left under. All good things come to and end and I have been sad to see many a player leave but this is not the normal situation where a player leaves to retire.