The club has lost the plot on this one!
His GF incident wasn't a mea culpa moment!
Would they have preferred him to end up like Colin Tyrer having been hit in the jaw by his opponents elbow/forearm?
We wouldn't, and Ben Flower wouldn't, be having anything like this if Hohaia had been sent off as he should have been. Or, if Hohaia had done his worst and broken Ben Flower's jaw as Hepworth broke Colin Tyrer's.
A ridiculous performance by the club!
After all, they were never going to sack him as another SL club would have signed him up the following day.
This club is now being better run than ever I can remember in decades of watching Wigan. Their whole attitiude over this incident though, I simply cannot understand!

Well it was a good day to bury the news with the football dominating all the media, let's move on.

What time's your slot at the Comedy Club this week?

It's time you gave it up Ted. You're an anachronism.

He'll still be getting beasted in training, he just can't play.

Training without being able to play is horrible.

I think the financial 'punishment' as your club are labelling it as is way way OTT, that he seemingly accepts it so readily comes across as more than a little odd. Even given his actions a fine by the RFL and ban plus a disciplinary by the club with stipulations for behaviour on/off field would be generally the norm.
To invoke a 50% reduction in wages over such a relatively long period is almost unheard of in sport never mind RL, are they backhanding him with a brown paper bag because unless they've made some sort of promise to him I can't honestly see how/why he would accept such an over the top punishment. I'd wonder if it is even legally enforceable IF he were to challenge it (which it looks like he won't anyway)

Whether he cost you a trophy and loss of income is irrelevant, you cannot financially punish a person on the back of being sent off to such an extent as being done even when it is as bad as his case is.

I know he'll still be able to train but his fundamental job won't be there for him. He got the biggest ban for a number of decades so only being paid 75% of your salary for a time doesn't look that OTT that some are suggesting (not you necessarily).

Rehabilitation... what the f**k?

He's been docked half his wages for 3 months. If he's on £60Kpa he's received a £7,500 (before tax) fine which probably works out nearer £5,000 after tax. It's not that bad really.

Someone earlier mentioned win bonuses. Can they get those under the salary cap?

^^ This....Paul Wood hit Pettybourne more than twice for no reason and got hardly anything, Flower gets elbowed in the face and reacts and gets letahered from all angles, Lance deserved the 2 Flower was just unlucky he has a glass jaw.

Flower did not get elbowed, never mind in his face

he was barely touched by LH with a pushing off leading forearm, that Flower instigated the whole thing in backfield seems to have passed you by.
The first punch was a sending off offence in its own right and not warranted retaliation, the second punch was just well...plenty has being said.
He has been punished with a decently hefty ban, but the financial punishment imposed by your club doesn't make sense and would appear on the face of it OTT unless there is another motive behind it.

The ban was imposed by the RFL for bringing the game into disrepute. This fine is imposed by Wigan for tarnishing the name of the club, both ban & fine are warranted IMO

We really have been conditioned by the tory media haven't we? Flower was a headline above ebola, a tweet of a white van & England flags is above hospitals closing due to cost cuttings, and no mention of further faults being found in nuclear reactors meaning power cuts over winter. The irony is rugby league never gets any attention on the southern tory media and here we are bending to there snobish judgements because we fear our sponsors may pull the plug. Yet in yawnion you can stamp on the players head and no one gives a toss what northerners think about it. Sponsors beware, we have no media coverage so you may as well pull out of the sport if you think throwing a punch may tarnish your image.

Imagine the Big Mac shortage that would hit West Yorkshire........

Getting really sick of the Hohaia apologists now and their 'Flower started it in back play' mantra. I'm not going over the same ground (see previous post) but are you saying every penalty on a rugby field should result in those offended against running 10 metres or so to elbow someone in the face? Get a grip man! And before you say he wasn't elbowed in the face again, I suggest you Google 'Lance Hohaia elbow'. It's really not that difficult!

Always been a Burger King man myself.

You are factually inaccurate. Hohaia used a forearm to the face, not an elbow, and that is what he received a one match ban for. The Sky footage quite clearly shows Flower push Hohaia in the back off the ball hard enough for Hohaia to fall over after which Hohaia ran after Flower and forearmed him in the face. There are no Hohaia apologists; but there are deluded people like yourself who think that Flower's actions were somehow justified or lessened by the fact that Hohaia responded with a forearm to the face to being pushed over off the ball (something the referee should have dealt with at the time).

I think Flower has been lucky myself. He was charged by Wigan with gross misconduct. In any career that equates to dismissal.

Whether anyone likes it or not Flower exposed the sport to national scrutiny and any follow up from Wigan had to reflect the degree of that scrutiny because that is the degree to which Wigan have to repair his and their reputations. Two versions of Flower's punches to Hohaia have been seen by over one and a half million people each on YouTube alone. Add to that pictures in every online news agency and print publication plus the footage on 24 hour TV news bulletins here and abroad as well as the audience for the match itself and that is significant damage done to the reputation of Ben Flower and, by association, Wigan (and the sport as a whole if the kind of discussions that went on in the aftermath are anything to go by).

he checked flowers run and got pushed out of the way, he reacts the forearm to the face and gets sparked out for it. Because he was KO'd people are feeling sorry for him. Guys an idiot who has got off very very lightly and the other guy has been made a scapegoat.

Thats like saying Flower barely touched him. He barely touched him with a poushing off leading fist.

absolute tripe. Who cares how many saddos checked it out on YouTube? As I said before, it's got to be sackcloth and ashes or the moral majority get all sparked up. Flower committed a serious offence but for Gods sake I wish people would get a grip. And if anyone actually believes that he needs counselling then I would suggest they book themselves in for a session too.

no it doesnt

Everyone is outraged these days and frankly it's laughable.

I think you hit the nail on the head/offered a perfect example with the mention of counselling for Flower. It's just a massive OTT reaction to what was essentially a rush of blood to the head by Flower. FWIW i think 6 month ban was a fair punishment and whilst i don't agree with 6 months half pay i can see how the club have come to that decision (paying him to just train and not play.)

Just look at the 'outrage' caused by the comments of a 77 year old man this week. What Whelan said isn't socially acceptable these days but at the same time i bet a very good percentage of his generation think in a similar way (Duke of Edinburgh anyone?). To call into question if he's fit and proper to run WAFC a laughable OTT reaction. He's poured his heart, soul and vast amounts of his money into WAFC and is loved by WAFC fans for this.

I think it's sad how society seems to bend to the people who find 'outrage' in everything.

This should have been an internal club disciplinary matter.
The results should have been kept in house without all this publicity.

That's a fair point.

For all the joking on here about announcements or lack of them something like this is something that didn't need to be made public knowledge.

I thought the club initially said that they wouldn't be enforcing their own punishment and would wait on the RFL's decision?

I think they really should have kept this in house. The dust had finally settled, and now they've kicked it all up in the air again with announcing this.

Flower got his "justice" when Hohaia didn't press criminal charges against him.

Plus part of the punishment has been set by your own club, this week, a fair while since the incident where lots of things have been happening in the sporting world since.

Plus Hartley didn't stamp on the lad's head. Anyway stamping can be part of a ruck in Union, and SA were continually, illegally, trying to take the ruck down from the floor so the lad was in the way and was trampled over.

(His leg was stamped on, his head wasn't)

I think many people have really overreacted to Flower's incident, but a fair few Wigan fans have made out the criticisms of it are as comical as when old whisky nose Ferguson said Ashley Williams "could have killed" van Persie when he booted the ball at his head a few years ago. The reality is Flower punched someone in the head who was prone and defenceless after being knocked down. A punch to the head to a man stood up, the punch can be absorbed by the rest of the body; yet on the floor a direct punch to the head doesn't get absorbed anywhere but the brain.

What I'd like though is for Flower to serve his sentence and a line to be drawn from there. That'll be his justice, if you like, but he needed punishing for what he did. When you look at what he's been dealt, it's only six week's pay and a 13 game ban. It's not [ithat[/i bad at all when you think you can be banned for two whole years for having a few lines of coke.