When do you think that Wigan went full time professional, and when do you think that Wigan bought all those players.

As I said previously Billy McGinty, Henderson Gill, Ged Byrne, Martin Hall, Neil Cowie etc. all gave good service to Wigan without being "star players" at the time of purchase. Indeed many questioned their signings.

Did Saints not do the same with Newlove, Sullivan, Sculthorpe, Goulding, Martyn, Joynt, Matautia, Nickle, Gibbs etc

Didn't Wire sign Ellis, Drumond, Boyd, Blake, Davies, Bateman (one of the most under rated centres I have ever see) Langer etc.

Surely it's not the same as Wigan doing it though.

this was done years after when teams went pro..you lot were the 1st team that went proffesional then years later other teams did it...hence the mighty wigan not winning everything...

So when did Wigan go full time pro?

not sure of the year but it was before the rest of the league..anyway should`nt you know that

So how can you be sure that all Wigans success was down to Wigan being full time pro?

By the way Leeds were the first team to go really full time.

Do you think Wigan were full time when they beat Warrington at Wembley in 1990?

no..but during the 80`s warrington players(not all) had jobs...cant see ellery or joe lydon or shaun edwards having a window cleaning round can you..leeds went full time after you then the rest slowly followed..

Brian Case was an electrician, Ian potter was a milkman, Ged Byrne had a window cleaning round, Steve Hampson was a drayman, Nicky Kiss was a plummer, David Stepenson had a well paid job in insurance, Ian Lucas ran an antiques business, Andy Farrell was an apprentice joiner, Nick du Toit had a pub (still does), Mark Preston had some sort of job in technology, Martin Dermott worked with a mate of mine at British Leyland.

Those are just a few that I know of.

Wigan weren't a full time lot as clubs are full time now. What the club said was that they had to have priority against any other jobs which players chose to have. So if the club said train at 10am they would train at 10am.

I was in business in Wigan at the time and - for example - Frano Botica would turn up helping his wife's selling business and we would see Andy Platt who worked with an electrical company.

ok ..was farrell a joiner later on when he was regular gb international...may be i was wrongwith the years but when you lot hogged the challenge cup and league many of your players were full time

Farrell was still an apprentice joiner in 1993, so he probably turned pro in 94, which IS when Wigan went FULL TIME pro.

Leeds I believe had already done it in 1993. IIRC

Also in 1996, Wigan had such well known pros as Steve Barrow, Danny Ellison and Craig Murdoch in their Premierhip winning side.

It's amazing the misconception about Wigan being full time pro long before anyone else.

What they did do to the best of my knowledge was to appoint the first full time coach in Graham Lowe.

Les, I'm not going to go over it all again as quite clearly for some people (and i'm not even saying this totally applies to you) their perception of what happened during the period will always be more vivid and the [itruth[/i rather than the actual facts that are on record, and very simple to look up in the days of the Internet. I often wonder if some of it is because for some, they were growing up during that period and everything felt more.

I have never denied that Wigan tried to sign the best players they could for their team (and clearly they all were not superstars as can be seen by the likes of McGinty, Cowie et al). I don't even mind people feeling that nobody else could compete when it came to signing players, thats their opinion and it may even be completely right (although the cheque book description oversimplifies the case, we waved a lot of money at Andy Gregory for a long time, but he didn't want to join until he felt the club was going places - that's why he signed for Widnes and not Wigan in the first place when turning professional - it really wasn't down to Widnes offering more cash).

Just to progress the debate, and break out of the enldess circling around, I won't even argue with your opinion on Wigan throwing the money around and other clubs not being able to compete, and it hurting the game etc. All I ask in return is that people stop trying to say we bought players with the intention of not playing them, because quite clearly that contridicts the truth on record (and yes we had a fair size squad, but they played a fair number of games - it's all on record on Bilko's excellent cherryandwhite.co.uk), and that paying high salaries was the cause of Wigan's financial woes (you're quite right it was a cause quite possibly even one of the biggest, but I just want people to stop twisting the facts (again in the age of the Internet it's easy to go back and look at the pre SL era in a calm collected way, without the burning emotions of what occured when you were living the events) and say it was the reason.

I'm a rugby league fan and a Wigan supporter, and there is a difference, and I'll defend any RL team or player who I feel is being treated unfairly or unreasonably regardless of who they are or which set of fans is doing the aggressing. I think some of the things said about Myler for example by some Wigan fans have been out of order, and i've told them as much.