Sam can certainly do the same for us long term but atm I really want him to develop his game more and become a better player and begin to boss the team around when its needed.

Riddell can be awesome if he gets fit but I don't see him being an 80min hooker and Cam Smith style. Every part of his game other than his strength (weight) is behind Cam Smith.
Yes we can cover over it with "hopefully he will come good" "his stats show up better than highams" but at the end of the day....

6 Tomkins
7 Orford, Bird.... someone like that



9McIlorum

14 Leuluai

maybe a new prop.

Looks alot better than what we have right now.

I am still really annoyed that in 2 years under Noble, he never noticed Leuluai was a better hooker than half-back. Many problems have stemmed from this one thing.

Will Riddell really look awesome playing his old game though, from what I saw of him and a classic example is on youtube, alot of his good stuff was on the back of QPTB but we don't get these in super league anymore.

Roby
Pryce
The rest of the QPTB merchants...
..have been poor all year really.

IMO the only way for Riddell to truely fit in is for him to get fit, earn his place over the others and then organise our pack and play simple rugby with good distribution and develop his kicking game, he does many stupid plays and sometimes tries to hard.

At this current moment in time though, he is a waste of money, a waste of a quota spot and a massive dissapointment looking at the whole picture. Mark Riddell is an example of a player who is stealing a living.

Before I get stick off anyone, this is a very one sided post, I could post good stuff about him if I really wanted

Leave the guy on the bench as a short term impact player until.
A: He proves he deserves a starting spot
B: His fitness & commitment improve A LOT !

I've not quoted your post

I'm sorry, but what are you talking about?

A. This should apply to ALL players. McIlorum and Leuluai should be in exactly the same spot - i.e. Nobody has a place in the team yet.

B. Fitness - I'll give you that, but IMO we have the best fitness and conditioning staff in the league now.

However - COMMITMENT....
How precisely has he shown ANY lack of commitment ????
He nipped home to console a life-long friend who had just lost a baby.
Having had 2 friends of mine go through exactly the same thing, I know just how devastating that can be.

And as for his honeymoon....
Has anyone actually considered the fact that he would have ASKED whether this was a good time to get married, and that NOBLE (because that was his boss at the time) would most likely have said "Yes, that's fine because pre-season training doesn't start until the first week of DECEMBER (like last year IIRC).
It's not Riddell's fault that the new regime has come in and brought pre-season forward (quite rightly IMO), and this would have been booked at least 12 months ago.

Just lay off him, and stop trying to find a scapegoat before we're even 2 months from the start of the season.

I'm sure that he'll be getting worried enough that the rest of the squad are a couple of weeks ahead of him in terms of fitness, but it also wouldn't surprise me (from what I've seen/heard about both Maguire and Bitcon) if they've sent him some "homework" and asked him to start in the hotel gym while on holiday.

Hey, hey, hey. Let's not let facts get in the way of a good pre-season lynching.

Perhaps we fans should now lay off the players - even the usual suspects - and see how they respond to what is in effect a completely new regime at Wigan.

There may have been all kinds of reasons why the likes of Riddell, Roberts, Pryce, Feka etc underperformed for Brian Noble.

We should wait and see if they continue to underperform for Mike Maguire. If they do, then we'll know there's a problem. Until then, a clean slate for everyone is surely a good idea.

Even Pryce ?????

(j/k

)

Depends who is on top !

Last season he wasnt good enough, but still an improvement on what we had. I think the biggest reason he gets so much stick is because we already have a hooker in the team who most prefer in that position in Leuluai, same with Roberts i think he gets most of his stick because most people would prefer to see Ainscough but it doesnt make them bad players.

Maybe in 2010 Piggy will be more settled in, a new start in married life and having his best mate in the country (glen hall) wont do him any harm.
Its a new start for all players and I think they all deserve a 2nd chance next year, for me Nobles style of coaching wasnt right for the team, we werent big enough and our backs have been wasting their talent for a couple of years. I think we will see massive improvement in most players next year.