I am a Wigan season ticket holder and will always go and support my club but I like many others am greatly disturbed by the current state of my club. This is not as many people might think a reaction to us losing to a team well adrift at the bottom of Super League but is due to the patterns that anyone including the fans of Wigan and other clubs can see. Patterns that some of the people that have been or are running our club either cannot see or if they can see them they seem from the fans’ perspective to be unwilling to do anything about.

Firstly with regards to our proportion of games won in super league during the regular season. I know that the championship is decided by the Grand Final series and that we have reached the final eliminator in the last two seasons but this cannot be used on its own as a measure of our standing in the competition in comparison with the previous 2 or 3 seasons. Over the last few seasons (with the current coach) we have established a pattern of winning a smaller proportion of our regular season games in any given season than we did in the previous campaign. Our record in playoff games serves only to paper over the cracks and mask the true state of our record competitively and disguises the need for improvement. This pattern follows a similar pattern to that in the seasons from around the year 2000. During that period our proportion of wins in the regular season slowly diminished with some good performances during the playoff series again papering over the cracks and the declines continued. This pattern of declining records culminated in a season where we very nearly suffered relegation. Although the threat of relegation is now removed surely the club must realise that any club that slips into a pattern of scrapping around the bottom of the table will come under the threat of their licence not being renewed particularly if clubs in the championship with equally good pedigrees (past trophies aren't everything) can be seen to be more progressive and upwardly mobile.

Secondly with regard to the promotion of young players. Whilst the wholesale transplanting of reserve players into the first team is not viable as 0-70 vs Leeds and 0-75 vs St Helens graphically demonstrated there does need to be some drip feed system in place. Although there are some young players coming through there is not the sort of conveyor belt system in evidence that has and is being used at clubs like St Helens. Taking the two most high profile youngsters as examples in Sam Tomkins and Shaun Ainscough highlights the problem in Wigan's case in the area of integrating youth. Here we have two players who have been thrust into a lot of games this season in an underperforming team whilst having little or no experience of first team rugby. Thrusting players into the first team in this manner creates a sink or swim situation and can as the coaching staff at Wigan have rightly pointed out have a detrimental effect on the player and their development. However Shaun and Sam are 19/20 years old now as they get their first taste of senior action. Surely a better way for following the duty of care and aiding development would be to give young players an increasing number of games from an earlier age. If an 18 year old is given 2/3 appearances (starting or as a sub), then 5/6 as a 19 year old and then 9\10 as a 20 year old he will be much better able to cope with the rigours of a more regular spot in the team afterwards. A player that springs to mind who seems to have followed this type of path is Kyle Eastmond who may well be the successor to Sean Long for Saints next year. If one place in the 17 is kept for an 18 year old, one for a 19 year old and one for a 20 year old in each first team game and the reserves rotated to fill these spots then it could ease them into the senior squad. Also as these developing players would always feature it would not be likely to cause much fluctuation in the standard of the squad as a whole and would surely be better for the club in the long run. Youth production is after all a required part of the licence and a club does not need to be in Super League to supply other clubs with players as Widnes and Leigh continue to show.

Whilst these are not the only problems we have at the moment I think these are two of the most pressing and this post is long enough already.

I have to say I disagree with most of what you say.

I have to say i disagree with your second point.

With regards to ainscough and tomkins, ainscough hasn't played many more games than was predicted for him at the beginning of the season, therefore he hasn't been thrust into any first team action that wasn't expected to be a case. As for tomkins, again his prediction was only to play a similar number of games to ainscough, but he has made a very good impact and has therefore forced the management into giving him much more game time.

As for drip feeding youth into the team, last year was the first big year for Joel Tomkins, and years before that players like Prescott, O'Carroll, Hansen have all been brought through.

If there is an area that i'm not particularly concerned about its the youth development at wigan, Leneghan especially seems keen to ensure that we our youth get game time as soon as they are ready an become mainstays of the first team.

great first post - have you been saving all that up

2 things wrong with wigan the team and the fans, trolling of the lowest order i know but i could not resist

Well put my good man

This guy just keeps standing up and we keep knocking him down. It's great.

The two problems at Wigan are;

1. You have no (performing) world class prop forwards.
2. You have a coach whos gameplans revolve around having at least three world class prop forwards.

What about a third, 5 drives and a poor kick

And again the wire fans would dream of the last few years we have had finishing 3rd two years in a row with a couple of cup semi-finals.

i hate to sound like im defending noble and everything, but i don't believe our pack EVER gives us a solid base to try anything but the above. Look at the games we've performed well with the backs, its always been "coincidentally" when coley et al have actually shown up.

A good argument and I have to agree with what he says about drip feeding players into the first team squad.

Look at James Graham the current man of steel and one of the best prop forwards in super league and a regular for England for many years to come:


2003 - 1 appearance ( Age 1icon_cool.gif
2004 - 7 appearances ( Age 19)
2005 - 21 appearances ( Age 20)
2006 - 21 appearances ( Age 21)
2007 - 26 appearances ( Age 22)
2008 - 25 appearances ( Age 23)

Paul Prescott:

2004 - 3 appearances ( Age 19)
2005 - 2 appearances ( Age 20)
2006 - 2 appearances ( Age 21)
2007 - 21 appearances ( Age 22)
2008 - 10 appearances (Age 23)

Kyle Eastmond

2007 - 2 appearances ( Age 17)
2008 - 14 appearances ( Age 1icon_cool.gif
2009 - 5 appearances (Age 19)

Sam Tomkins

2007 -
2008 -
2009 - 11 appearances ( Age 20)

So Saints seem to be blooding youngsters far more earlier than Wigan and much more gradual as well. Recently with Sean Ainscough and Sam Tomkins they have just been thrown into the squad without any real duty of care at all. So subsequently lad behind other young players.