Quote: Les Boyd Is God "its the open cheque book debate here..wigan bought any one at will in the days when wigan won the league at a canter..and you did have a bigger squad than any one else,so some players could`nt possibly play every week....when other clubs went proffesional there was more of a contest in matches...something wigan did not like'"
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.
