No. They both left off their own backs. Carney to play NRL and Guisset because he wanted to play with the new Catalans team in 2006. He was only on a 1 year deal anyway.

Are you kidding?

Newton has always been a far better player then Higham but Millward wanted to work with a player he rated from his Saints days ignoring the fact that Newton was a Wiganer through and through and would give his last breath for the club.

I'm not one of the Wigan fans who slag Higham off either. He always gave his best for Wigan and was a decent player in tough times but he should never have been brought in as a replacement for Newton. Like i said previously in the thread i've nothing against Millward tbh. Things just didn't work out for him here but that bit of business was the worst thing he did here by a distance.

I agree alot of people took their eye off the ball in that swap deal with Bradford thinking we'd got one up on you. I remember at the time alot of Saints fans saying on here he was only your 3rd best hooker and that we'd been had.

He was just the last thing we needed at that time.

Considering the losses of Andy Farrell, Adrian Lam, Craig Smith, Terry O'Connor and Mick Cassidy we were ticking along reasonably well under Denis Betts in 2005, highlighted by the easter when rlwe beat Saints at homerl then backed it up with an rlincredible win away at Hull FCrl when our half backs were Chris Melling and Wayne Godwin, Bob Beswick played at Loose Forward and a the bench consisted of really young Liam Colbon, Paul Prescott, James Coyle & Dave Allen.

Within a month of Millward arriving we lost 0-70 and 0-75 back to back. The problem was the players didn't think Betts deserved to be nobbled because as I highlighted we were doing ok considering the huge loss of experience at the end of 2004.

But in defence of Millward's reign, I've said it many times, take the equivalents of Lam, C.Smith, Farrell, O'Connor and Cassidy out of any team and they'd struggle. Then add Radlinski, Newton and Carney on top and is it any wonder we ended up fighting relegation. We also lost the most experienced youngsters (O'Loughlin and Hock) to long term injury in that period. Thats before I even mention how much the board screwed up our salary cap.

The board were far more to blame for our predicament in early 2006 than Millward in my view. They mismanged the salary cap so badly in replacing that experience giving us Vaealiki (awful signing) and two one legged props (Davico who never played and Seuseu who was never fit).

The Millward reign though really shows how big a job Noble did at our club. Fans will point to us losing 5 semi finals during Noble's reign but when you think about, what an achievement to even get so close. I suppose his downfall was that we never looked like kicking on beyond that.

I think only time will prove whether Millward was a really good coach or not (i.e his future success at Leigh). I'd argue success was handed on a plate to him in some respects at Saints because previous coaches left him with a young hardcore of talent like Long, Sculthorpe, Cunningham and Wellens on top of experience like Joynt and Martyn. It would have been hard for anyone to fail at that period.

Never really hit me for 6 either but was a worker.

Wigan were on a sticky wicket at the time.

this forum is becoming getting stranger and stranger

1. IL is great and fans forums are totally worthwhile and not just as forum-like as a meeting with north korean rulers
2. millward wasnt that bad!

whats next

3. shaun edwards is actually from st helens?
4. wellens was better than radlinski?

I thought this also. In fact i am sure i have read Brian Noble quoted as saying "when mo asked me if i would like to go through with the proposed signing of Barrett i jumped at the chance"...

Or words to that effect.

I too thought Denis Betts was doing a great job under the circumstances, in that he was a rookie coach who was shoved into the main job through the loss of Mike Gregory due to his illness.

I felt for Betts, but that said, we couldn't NOT sign Millward, given his availability, his track record and the fact that Betts was indeed a rookie and temporary. On paper it was a no-brainer.

Hindsight is a great thing.

Agree about Terry Newton although I had nothing against Micky Higham. Seem to think Carney was released early from his contract and even if he wasn't he couldn't get his @rse through the door fast enough cos he wanted to go play in Australia.

How about G'day Goldfish Gob as a greeting to the beloved Ian?

Spot on.

I was eating a lovely hoi sin 'duck' when you announced his signing.

Taking a very successful coach from your bitter rivals, and a controversial one at that. Putting him into a club with an obvious internal problem ie some older players seeing themselves more important than your club, rumours of interesting social activities and the way in which a legend had been sacked, was always going to be a tough job for the next man. When you add in the salary cap problem, injuries etc JC himself would have struggled.
The signings of the NL players was a desperate measure to fill out the teamsheet without spending money, I recall an interseting story about Vaealiki when offered his contract had accepted it assuming it was Aus Dollars - how happy he was to find a £ sign
As someone stated the person signing players and managing the SC had a lot to answer for.

If that is true then the players should have had their wages docked They are proffessionals and play for and are payed by the club not the coach. I agree that he did walk into a fantastic team at Saints but they didn't go against him. As has been said on here your board had a lot to answer for during all your woes. It's funny that nearly all the players that have worked under Millward have said he is a good coach apart from ( according to this forum) yours. I personally think if you had stuck with him you would have come through that hickup, because thats all it was. I wonder if Terry's high shot on Longy had anything to do with his sale. Who knows. I know this I'm looking forward to the weekend. See you all soon.

Spoke with Mr Maguire, This morning , at the gym, he says one Joe Winter from St Judes is about to welcomed onto the coacing team.

The fact he is a Wiganer is what blinded people to Newton's failings IMO. He rarely played well for us in a big games IMO because he let himself get would up too much - probably because he was a Wiganer and wanted to win so much but he seemed to let it cloud his judgment at times (understatement).

The fact he got such a severe suspension for giving Long the crack he did summed up his problem for me and despite his obvious ability I didn't shed any tears over his departure.

As to Millward he wasn't given the luxury of having Fielden bolster the pack nor a new scrum half so when people complain about this signings they need to ask why he was not given those players but had to settle for those he [idid[/i sign.

That said signing those two players wasn't the only reason we improved dramatically after he left and Noble arrived. The rest of the team bucked it's ideas up 1000% and so Millward has to take a lot of the blame for how they played under him compared to what Noble got out of them.

Dave