Quote: sergeant pepper "I'm not saying I agree with everything WK is saying, but I think people are missing some of the points he's trying to make. We undoubtedly had success under IL - that's a fact & one shown by the stats. It was a decent period trophy wise.
The point was however that we should have had way more & I agree with that. You look at that 2010 team and there was a core to it that, if IL had kept it together for a decade, could have been absolutely dominant. Instead we've come out even with two other sides. I don't think that's massively controversial to say.
If I had one criticism of IL, he never seemed (imo) to want to be dominant. He was happy picking up and sharing the trophies. Of course he wanted to win everything, but not winning everything didn't seem to cut him as deep as it should.
I want to see us become absolutely ruthless under Danson. Simply the best on and off the field. I want the 80's and 90's Wigan back. I want opposition fans to already know, in Jan, that both trophies will have cherry and white tassels on them by the end of the season.
Realistic? Probably not, but it has been done before.'"
That 2010 team had quite a few older players in it to be fair and it felt like we pretty much did keep who we needed to keep for a period. The obvious loss was Sam Tomkins but guys like Micky Mac, Lockers and Faz were here for as long as we wanted them to be here. Joel Tomkins left but then that highlights how things move on because we then had Hansen and Farrell starting and Bateman came not long after, so you’re probably in a better position. Guys like Carmont, Deacon, Coley, Fielden, Riddell etc just hit the end of their careers, Richards wanted to go back to Oz and Gleeson got himself in bother.
I’m the first to become frustrated with constant player exits but the club has been really good at making sure there is a succession plan in place most of the time. We should’ve won more, without a doubt but that was mainly down to us bombing a few finals/semi finals. The only period of the 15 years Lenagan owned us I felt he got badly wrong was the Edwards/Lam situation. We’re Wigan and we shouldn’t wait 12 months for anybody but I’ll forgive him that one.