I thought it was Mike Nolan's idea to bring Monie back? He invited him to a meeting at his home near Haydock Park racecourse and offered him the job in late 97. Nolan stood down mid 98 over disagreements with Whelan regarding signings for 97 and idiot Peter Norbury the new chairman sacked Monie in 99 after about 8 games. It was also Norbury that resulted in Robbie McCormack leaving after one year. He wanted to stay but Norbury offered him much less money which he refused and Monie had a bust up with Norbury over it resulting in Norbury finally agreeing to an improved offer but when Monie put it to McCormack, he refused saying he felt insulted.

When Monie first came in at the end of the 97 season, he said the club was in a right mess and unrecognisable from the club he left a few years earlier. I imagine Eric Hughes played a huge part in the drop in standards. What on Earth was we thinking giving him the head coaches job?

When he had those conversations who was the owner?
We all know that Whelan was ultimately in charge and although Mo for example came back late 99 until 2007 it was Whelan who as the owner was ultimately in charge.

Monie only came back because of Whelan, he would never have come back under Robinson. That's the point I was making

You cant blame Norbury as Whelans stooge for sacking Monie, when it was another one of Whelans stooges that got him to come in the first place.

As for the club being a complete shambles, he was right, but dont blame Eric Hughes. He was only part of the issue. Who appointed him? Who sacked West at the wrong time? Who employed Dorohay? Who continued to spend money on many numerous signings that, in which ever way you look at it from 94/95 ish onwards we didnt have the money to actually buy.
And that's before I go into the many other issues financially and legally we found ourselves in 96/97 that ultimately led to Whelans takeover.

I'm no Whelan fan by a long way, and Ian Leneghan beats them both hands down. But Robinson made some terrible decisions and was a massive part of the reason the club was in a shambles

My comment about the Council wanting the club away from near the town centre was not a opinion, but a fact confirmed to me at the time by a leading Councillor.

As for John Monie, he was indeed made Coach by Whelan, but unlike the time he first came to the club, he did not get the same financial support from Whelan for better quality players that he had from the gang of four when they ran the club.

Never tightfisted though, where his beloved Latic's was concerned!

Why you changing the subject again?
I only said that originally that Monie wouldn't have been here if it wasn't for Whelan (I don't like him either)
But we can hardly criticise the Whelan's Stooge that sacked him when it was only because another one of Whelan's Stooges got him to come in the first place.

As for tight fisted, as much as I don't like him he inherited/purchased a Poop Storm from Robinson
He did invest in Moore/Bell/Betts/Maestrov etc.
We managed to keep it in place year 1 (9icon_cool.gif but when those contracts kicked in that Robinson/Connolly (Not sure about Rads?) had signed with the ARL and we paid over the odds to get them back then we had to lose certain players.
Paul went (Although I do think he wanted to go anyway)
And the reinvestment in 99 wasn't "Great" although I don't think it was too bad (Florimo etc.)
And I'm pretty sure the investment in Newton/Peters/Renouf/Dallas/Johns/Lam/Furner etc. wasn't too bad? Plus the retention of Connolly/Farrell/Rads/Betts etc.

But at a time when the cap was really kicking in the top players took too much of the cap space and left little for the rest
This was where the cap was mismanaged over the next 4/5 years and led to 2005/6/7 debacle

Neither Whelan nor Lindsay could manage the cap. They just expected to throw money about and bring back the glory days.

They weren't too far away with the number of finals we competed in TBH.

Together in their first 5 years 00/04 they made 1 final each year and unfortunately that only manifested 1 trophy - Which I think is very unlucky given the Quality we had - We also had to compete with initially 2 then 3 of the Best clubs sides the countries seen in the SL era in Bradford/Saints & Leeds.

The trouble was though, the lack of cap management, the lack of squad depth which led to the Youth not being looked after correctly was a Ticking Timebomb

First of all I don't believe we should underestimate how badly the Mike Gregory situation was dealt with
And as the injury crisis and the Millward situation came together which initiated Newton leaving etc. the whole House seemed to crumble.

We threw money at it again in 2005/6 which didn't work for a number of reasons (Moran/Calderwood/Feka/Richards/Fletcher etc.) and it took more money to rescue us from it (Fielden/Dobson etc.) which in turn Hamstrung us 2007/08

I've said previously that the fans forum start of 2008 was alarming - How much % of the cap was being spent on such a small % of players.
Leneghan asked for 2 years to sort it so he could redistribute and retain the youth - He wasn't far off

Exactly my point. Our cap management was dreadful.

Im not sure how much Whelan was in charge of signings. He may of owned the club but from what i see in Monies book, it was the chairman that was in control of that side of things. Monie himself says he fought the chairman (Norbury, not Whelan) and lost.

Regardless of who was ultimately to blame, had we kept Monie through into the early 00's, i would put my house on us going on another run of silverware. The calibre of players we had from 2000-2003ish with only one challenge cup to show for it is criminal.

Whelan always had the final say on signings both at the Latic's and at Wigan.

Norbury was only a front man for Whelan and any fight by Monie over signings would have been in reality, a fight with Whelan.

So Monie not wanting to come back to the club at the request of Lindsay would have more to do with Whelan's ownership of the club and not Norbury!

Agree, As Whelan wasn't patient enough with a lot of the issues he'd inherited - If he'd have waited another 6months who knows as Mo would have handled them both better IMO
However still stands, Monie would not have come back under Robinson

But Whelan still owned the club when Lindsay offered Monie his job back. If it was really Whelan who sacked Monie, and he was really in charge of that side of things, why did he allow Lindsay to try and bring back the guy he had sacked 6 months earlier? It makes no sense. The only thing that changed from Monie being sacked to being offered the job back was that Norbury went and Lindsay came in.

Perhaps it was because it was Lindsay who suggested to Whelan that they get Monie back, but after the way he had been treated by Whelan who had sacked him via his stooge Norbury, he no longer wanted to come back to a club now under the control of a owner for whom he had no respect.

Very good at getting others to do his dirty work was Whelan!

That ones easy. Saints 1-13 was a million times better

yeah it just wasnt

I always thought the best backline in SL history was Wigan in 2000. Radlinski, Dallas, Connolly, Renouf, Robinson.

Yeah and in 2001 we had Lam and Johns at halfback. Matthew Johns was a very good player who for one reason or another never really got the chance to show his best at Wigan.

Yeah Robinson had gone then which was a big blow but David Hodgson was around then and he had pace as well. That era of SL was quite exciting as defences weren't as good or structured as they are now so you would get a lot more broken play and players scoring from distance. I remember the Wigan v Saints games in the Endacott v Millward era being great entertainment. Even Warrington who were largely crap, were able to stay in games against good teams because Langer and Briers and our pace in the centres meant we kept scoring points.

Another feature of this era was that Bradford had a huge advantage in conditioning over the rest of the league. They had a lot of players that were pedestrian compared to Wigan, Saints or Leeds: I wonder how many games Spruce, Naylor, McAvoy and Brooker would have got in that Wigan back line, but Bradford were ahead in trophies at the time.

The Matty Johns thing was strange, that was a huge signing but from my memory the press and fans were quite cold on him from the start. Some of it was because this was quite a "populist" era in terms of everybody having it in for foreign signings, all the letters that would be written in to League Express were like UKIP/Gary Schofield view of "we should limit it to 1 per team and make clubs give young lads a chance".

I think early on Matty Johns was injured and Phil Jones came in for a game on Sky and got a hat-trick and that set the narrative of "Matty Johns is holding back opportunities from Jones".

he was injured a lot Johns

Says similar in Frank's book I believe

I used to talk regularly to a Newcastle Knights fanatic in Australia around the time and Knights supporters were devastated when Matty Johns left the Knights. I think a lot of people over here were comparing him to his brother which meant whatever he did was never going to be good enough, nobody could come close to Andrew Johns at that time other than Darren Lockyer but Matty Johns was a great player in his own right. You could see with some of his touches that there was a much better player under what we were seeing. I think as has been said, he wasnt 100% fit and i dont think he ever particularly settled here.

Yes the Knights fans are very attached to their home grown players. They were really gutted to lose the semi final to the Roosters in 2000 when they blew a big lead. The script had been written for the Johns brothers to win a second Grand Final together before Matty headed to England. In the event they won it the next year but Matty wasn't there. Brett Kimmorley came through the Knights juniors at the same time as the Johns brothers, they were stacked for halfback talent.

There had been a lot of chopping and changing in the halves in that era for Wigan....Paul/Smith, Florimo/Clinch, Peters/Farrell, Lam/Johns, Lam/O'Neill, it was a different partnership every year and probably didn't help with consistency.

then Orr and Lam, I agree with that

It still blows my mind that this was ever seen as a good idea. Good lord. A lot of the others were great players, we just didn't keep them around long enough (or couldn't, in cases like Willie Peters).

I'll also never really understand why we didn't give Luke Robinson a go and instead ended up with Orr (who was mostly useless as I recall) and Moran in later years. I mean I know one of the stories about why he was let go (re: Pongia) but surely it was more than that?

Orr was good, Robinson was moved on for having a big mouth if I recall, Clinch and Chester was a worse selection

I think Lindsay and then Whelan were struggling to adapt to the SL era and the rise of Bradford and Saints and were acting like those presidents of the galacticos European football teams who like shopping for players and changing coaches in the hope that something works. Halifax had a great season in 1998 and were the team on the rise, so their best players Florimo, Chester and Clinch turn up at Wigan. Orr was the rising star at Cas, so they get him in. Moran was a one-man team in London, so they get him in.

It was a strategy that kept Wigan trapped just below the top tier, they had a rotating door of talented players who came in and out but they didn't have the stable core that Bradford, Saints and Leeds did, other than Farrell, and when he left the foundations caved in rapidly. It was similar to the Sydney Roosters in the 1990s (when Lam was there), they were the 'transit lounge' for big names coming and going then something clicked in the early 2000s when Ricky Stuart was coach and they dominated the NRL for a while.

In the 2010s Wigan had a different approach, much more strategic, no vanity signings, mostly a home grown core and then some signings strategically bought in. Some of these, Blake Green, Matty Smith, were like Clinch in that around the league people thought is this guy really a Wigan calibre player, but they fit the team and what Wane was trying to build.

I remember early in 2004 seeing an interview with Mike Gregory when he was hinting at changing the culture in the direction of the type of thing Wane would later bring in - moving away from big names and big egos towards building the squad around the generation of talent coming through. Obviously tragic events intervened but if that hadn't happened, it would have been interesting to see if Whelan would have had the patience for MGs approach. He soon reverted to type, bringing in Millward and then going on that big recruitment spree for 2006 which completely tanked.