Several young players have been getting experience in the Championship with Workington. Ryan Hampshire, Dom Manfredi, Logan Tompkins, Connor Farrell, Lewis Tierney, James Greenwood, and Jamie Doran have all been there this season. That is better for their development than in the Under 21's. Gelling last season was out of the first team and played for Workington in 1 game and had a blinder. Wane picked him for the first team on the back of that game and he's never been out of the first team since.

This whole "team of local lads" line is pretty redundant IMO. The club have done less overseas recruitment but have still recruited pretty heavily fom within SL. Smith, Bateman, Sarginson, Clubb, Flower - all have been recruited from other SL clubs. Scott Taylor could've been a mainstay of our pack for the next 10 years if he wasn't desperate to put chip spice on his chips (via Salford of course). Even academy lads like Mossop, McIlorum and Hamsphire aren't Wigan lads.

Agree about the penny pinching to a certain extent. I'm still confident we will improve and be in the top 4 by the time the split happens, but hopefully the beginning of this season open IL's eyes that he needs to be spending the full cap to properly compete. The word is he is going to vote in favour of the marquee signing and this, along with rumours of Sam Tomkins coming back is very welcome!

I wonder if we'll get enough votes for the marquee player rule.

Wigan have now backed it. I'd expect Salford and Wire will but who else?

Hetherington has a bunch of lads that play for the love of the club, Catalans get the (slightly damaged) marquee players already due to the lifestyle they can offer, Saints are doing fine without it and Hull don't seem quite as cashed up as they were.

After that I'm struggling. HKR might go for it but Huddersfield tend to buy British.

It depends what the proposal is IMO. If marquee player spots can be sold between clubs (e.g Wigan pay Wakefield £x and as a result can now buy two marquee players) I can see the lower teams being more open to it.

Bowen - huge experience
Charnley - played in plenty of big games for both Wigan and England
Gelling - been around for a while now and played in a World Cup
Sarginson - over 75 SL games, including big finals and the Tri Nations
Burgess - nearly 50 SL games, including a grand final
Williams - inexperienced, yet still with 30 odd SL games under his belt
Smith - 200 top flight games plus international reps
Mossop - Around 100 SL games, NRL experience and England caps
MM - nearly 200 SL games plus international honours
Clubb - nearly 200 SL games plus England caps
Faz - 150 SL games plus England caps
Joel - 150+ SL games plus England caps in both codes
Bateman - 70+ SL games

I've left out Lockers, who obviously has huge experience. Crosby has 70 odd senior games, Patrick 100+ (and Welsh caps), Tautai has decent experience from the NRL and SL, Ben Flower has 100+ games plus a good number of Welsh caps. Even the likes of Logan and Powell have 50 odd SL games on average.

It isn't 'that' inexperienced, and certainly wasn't sufficiently so to stop us reaching the Grand Final last year. They're just not playing well.

An interesting thread and tbh if you go back to pre Brown at Saints you'll find quite a few on Saints board complaining about the shape of our recruitment / retention... Laffranchi to replace Graham (terrible) , Chris Flannery (Mr Average) retained at the expense of academy players , the fact we went years without a left centre on the vague hope we might produce one and the farce we had with halfbacks for years - only really resolved this season with the potential of a Walsh/Burns pairing.

Looking at Wigan's squad your probably only a couple of players short, an experienced halfback and a monster prop , maybe 2. If Tomkins comes back you could probably scrap the halfback and put hampshire @ 6.