Quote: Grimmy "Gells money presumably spent on Sarginson, I'm guessing if we had much money left under the cap, then we would have retained McIlorum. Granted FPN has left since then, but doubt that he was on a similar wage to what Hardaker would command (bloody hope not anyway!).
You know how it is with a salary capped sport, you can only afford a few big names, and can't generally have quality experienced players sat in reserve waiting to step up. My guess would be that Escare+1 would have to go, Tomkins would play in the halves, and Hardaker ballsing up would mean someone having to step up to play halfback, so that Tomkins could go to Full Back. Of course that's speculation and loads can change in two years or so, but what we can be sure of, is that there will be a salary cap in place, and he would take a chunk of it, meaning we would need to be able to rely upon him.'"
Ultimately, we won't know what's happening until it happens, cliche though that is.
I should state that I'm not 100% in favour of signing Hardaker. But I've said a number of times that I think we are star-lite at present. We simply don't have enough game-breakers, and the insurmountable problem these days - salary cap, etc - is that they aren't as available as they once were. So, on the rare occasions when they come along, what do we do?
On another thread, Jonh, a poster I respect a lot, is expressing concern about us signing bad boys. My own feeling is that, while signing bad boys is never ideal, sometimes you've no option if you want to get great players on the field. Aussie stars only tend to come here these days if they've messed up Down Under. Obvious recent examples are Chris Sandow and Ben Barba; both were high-risk signings, and Sandow ultimately didn't work out (who knows what'll happen with Barba), but these guys are the kind of mercurial talents we rarely see on British RL pitches these days. I wouldn't quite put Hardaker in that category, but we know that he's capable of astonishing performances - and at Wigan we are really in need of something like that.
So, while I'm unsure about this, I think there are potential positives as well as negatives.
