Amos Roberts

Has a team ever lost as many first team players as us replaced them with youngsters with potential and then gone on to compete for trophies? I see this as a bit of a transition period and it may be good in the long term but we may see some hit and miss performances in the short term.

So be it i say.

the future of our club as never been more exciting IMO..the players we produce and god knows who we unearth in wales is making me very excited about the coming years at Wigan RL

I think we'll still be up there competing. A lot of this squad were present for the GF win and even more for the CC win so it's not like we've undergone a complete overhaul of the whole first team. We still have top quality players in the squad

But I'd have any one of those in this current Wigan squad

Good spot, so that's four and all off contract at the end of the coming season.

I agree. I was hugely disappointed by the loss of Joel, but all this I feel is very positive.

It's hard to imagine that as recently as 2006 I was thinking that relegation might be the best thing for us, as it would allow us to rebuild the club from top to bottom. Now we seem to have managed that anway, and have won three trophies in the meantime.

As others have said, we might take a short term hit but in the long term this is smarter than signing three 30 year old mediocre overseas players on big pay packets who will take one season to settle in, play fairly well for a couple of seasons then retire. The centre issue I find acceptable because they obviously planned to continue to develop Joel as a centre and let Hock replace him in the back row. If you take away the right centre from any SL side I'm sure the replacement wouldn't be much better than Goulding.

What I don't understand is why they never took the chance to debut any of Powell, Mellor or Logan last year against the lower placed sides. It was obvious at least one of them would be needed to replace Deacon. We can't have McIlorum playing 80 every match, and sticking Lockers at 6 so Leuluai can give McIlorum a breather is far from ideal. Hopefully one of them will prove to be good enough to make the 17. Having said that, I would still rather us have signed a half/hooker instead of Lauaki, or just kept O'Carroll.

Still some quality players in that lot and im sure given the chance most would love it if we could sign one or two of them.

I would have quite a few of them as well, that only backs up my point.

Most of these are their best players and are all close to either coming out of their 'peak' or retiring. A dangerous position to be in.

This season should be another good one for them, but after that could be very tricky. Like I said, its not a position I would like Wigan to be in.

One or two yes, but I wouldn't want all ten in the squad

But that is explicitly not what IL and Wane have said is going to happen.

When Wane was announced as coach just a few weeks ago the talk from both of them was about improving on last season not taking a step back. IL expects Wigan to be in at least one final every season and he is looking for the team to improve from last season. Wane was saying he felt the team should be more consistent (he was referring to too many drawn games I think) and that this was one of his aims.

He is going to do extremely well as a coach if he manages to do that and satisfy IL's ambition given who we have lost and who we have recruited.

That is not to knock these players. The 18 year old sounds a very promising addition to the squad but I don't see any of them as being players to replace the likes of Joel, Coley and a solution in 2012 to the centre problem.

That hopefully comes in the form of Anthony Gelling. He has the physically attirbutes to be just as good as Joel at cente and Joel was not a natural centre, he was still learning. Gelling has played centre and could potentially be a really good signing. Gleeson was a huge loss and we never replaced him other than Joel showing some potential, if this guy can show some potential at centre then we won't really lose out.

Off course we will lose out considering he hasnt actually played any first grade yet. You say Joel was learning, but so is this guy.

That was down to Maguire sticking with certain players he knew and creating a 'squad within a squad' and not giving a chance to some of the young players. It's because he had no interest in what happened in the future, all he cared about was winning trophies this year.

It's something Shaun Wane wasn't happy with so I imagine a few players being given their debut this season.