Quote: Big Steve "We're definitely suffering through having lots of potential but lack of experience in critical playing positions.
For me it highlights the issue with scrapping u21s, the gulf between quality below first grade is far to large. As a consequence the promising youngsters have not been teste enough under real pressure. Wigans youngsters dominate most games, the decision makers don't really get tested, they have nowhere to go to debelop further except on loan which isn't always practical or ideal.
An older age group reserve team would make a tougher learning ground for promising youngsters and they would be better placed to step into first grade.'"
Bowen - huge experience
Charnley - played in plenty of big games for both Wigan and England
Gelling - been around for a while now and played in a World Cup
Sarginson - over 75 SL games, including big finals and the Tri Nations
Burgess - nearly 50 SL games, including a grand final
Williams - inexperienced, yet still with 30 odd SL games under his belt
Smith - 200 top flight games plus international reps
Mossop - Around 100 SL games, NRL experience and England caps
MM - nearly 200 SL games plus international honours
Clubb - nearly 200 SL games plus England caps
Faz - 150 SL games plus England caps
Joel - 150+ SL games plus England caps in both codes
Bateman - 70+ SL games
I've left out Lockers, who obviously has huge experience. Crosby has 70 odd senior games, Patrick 100+ (and Welsh caps), Tautai has decent experience from the NRL and SL, Ben Flower has 100+ games plus a good number of Welsh caps. Even the likes of Logan and Powell have 50 odd SL games on average.
It isn't 'that' inexperienced, and certainly wasn't sufficiently so to stop us reaching the Grand Final last year. They're just not playing well.
