Quote: Wigan Peer "As someone has just posted on twitter, he has had two seasons as a head coach, and won all three available trophies....
I really want to have my say too some on here who have criticised and stifled debate on how the management have managed the season, but best not....'"
Ultimately there will always be malcontents. People who just don't like for the sake of not liking. The IL period at Wigan RL, thus far at least, has been strongly notable for this - especially on online forums like ours. IL himself and SW have come under repeated stinging attack. Yet the malcontents must now be feeling a little isolated.
Not that the criticism has always had the ring of sanity anyway. Here are some examples:
Virtually on first arriving at Wigan, IL was accused of being a nasty, mean little man whom the OP didn't like on sight (even though he admitted to not knowing him). Said OP then disappeared and has never returned!!! Two phrases spring to mind on that front: 'Psycho', or more likely, 'idiot'.
A short time later, IL was accused of betraying Brian Noble by not renewing his contract. I mean, you really couldn't make that one up. But it actually happened. After that, he also spent time in the dock because he wouldn't announce the successor - even though he was, at that stage, still negotiating with him.
Issues were made concerning the departure of average to mediocre players - like Nickey Stanton and Shaun Ainscough, neither of who we hear anything about these days. The loss of Mickey Higham was a more regrettable affair, yet, good lad though he was, he wasn't worth the fuss that was made.
When we won the Grand Final in 2010, IL was accused of having got lucky in his appointment of Michael Maguire. Apparently he just dipped his hand into a hat and pulled out the name of an Aussie assistant. He didn't do any due diligence, he didn't consult Wayne Bennett or Craig Bellamy. It was all luck.
In the SW era, both men were criticised for their handling of the Gareth Hock affair. Another one that you couldn't make up. Hock is indeed a good player, but he was given every chance at Wigan, and he blew them all. Thanks to his poor discipline both off and on the field, he's now missed something like two Challenge Cup winner medals and two Grand Final medals. On the subject of Hock, we were subjected to all kinds of ominous whisperings, like: 'Iit'll all come out in the wash', 'the club is at an all-time low','the club is in the gutter'. When we asked what was going on, we were told cryptically 'read between the lines'. Well, I tried ... but failed to find anything of significance. So we waited patiently to see if something would happen. And nothing did.
This last season, of course, the moaners have had a field-day. The mid/late-season results were a sign that SW simply wasn't good enough - I guess the Challenge Cup win was just a blip. When it was finally announced that Sam was leaving, something everyone had known was going to happen for months, the moaners, who'd clearly been saving up an awful lot of energy for this one event, really blew a gasket, and yet - much to their own surprise, I think - they didn't win universal support from the Wigan faithful, the vast majority of whom were obviously closet happy-clappers. Back in the real world, it was more the case that quite a few fans, by now, were getting used to the idea that British RL is in a financial rut, and that the new emphasis had to be about making the best of a bad situation.
Yet ironically we were treated to more rubbish.
In response to reasoned arguments, we got 'Wigan RL is a sports club, not a business - it should not be necessary to run it on profitable lines'. Yeah? Try telling that to Bradford.
One of the most amazing accusations of all was that IL was trousering transfer fees - something I still think was libelous, though the Wigan club being who they are, it was never likely they would follow that through (and someone clearly had a word with the poster in question anyway).
And now, suddenly, we're where we are. We've done the double. In two years, SW has matched the achievement of the supposedly peerless St Helens side of the mid-2000s, except that we've done it when the CC and GF were virtually back to back, which no-one has done before. Since IL came on board - having financially reorganised the club, put massive emphasis on the junior programme, and having made several very astute appointments like Bitcon, Deacon, Johnson, Rads etc (all fortuitous decisions on his part, no doubt!!!) - we are indisputably back among the elite of the British game. Silverware glints in the cabinet. We're playing the Aussie champs again. We are the talk of the town.
Everyone is very happy. No one has got a bad word to say. But it was like that in 2010.
I wonder how long it will last this time.