I'm glad Byrne is staying. He's got the potential to be a great forward as we all saw towards the back end of 2023 before his unfortunate injury. He's shown glimpses of it this year but he's struggled to hit those heights again. He seems to struggle with his consistency as one week he's one of the stand-out forwards, and then he becomes a liability the next week. If you compare this to Havard who is consistently good every week, it's hard to justify putting Byrne out there. The new tackle rules this year and the upcoming "below the shoulder" rules for 2025 have diminished one of the best aspects of his game: his aggressive tackling. He enters the tackle very upright, putting him at risk of conceding a penalty with the new rules.

So we are less than two weeks away from when out of contract players (at the end of the 2025 season) are allowed to be contacted by other clubs, 1st December I believe.

For Wigan these players are:

Liam Farrell,
Liam Byrne,
Jacob Douglas,
Sam Eseh (one-year extension option),
Willie Isa,
Adam Keighran

Of the above do we expect all (apart from probably Willie Isa) to sign an extension?

Keighran was superb the back end of last year but I imagine he is on good money after we pinched him from Catalans so I wouldn't be shocked if we let him go and gave Eckersley the 3 shirt. Douglas should be putting pressure on Miski this season if he is to be retained also

Plenty to weigh up with Keighran. He takes a quota spot and pretty good money you'd imagine and keeping him potentially holds back Eckersley but he's a good player, offers good utility value and is an excellent goal kicker. Ideal world stuff, you keep him and Eckersley has the challenge of taking his spot or even a wing spot ahead of Miski (same with Douglas trying to do that) but we'll see.