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

Yes but i would get banned for life if i posted it on here or said it if i was to see him on sunday

he shouldnt have been anywhere near our club

i said it at the time and still stand by what i said .

at the time , it was like ferguson going to liverpool , it would never happen and should not have happened to our club . there are certain lines that should not be crossed

i even stayed away for a period i hated the decision so much

he has defo found his level now

"Two-faced, and we know we are...."

Millward made some bad mistakes at Wigan - he even admitted that when he was sacked - in another time he may have been succesful. IMO Noble was very unlucky and did a good job at a very difficult period for the Wigan club. Personally as a rugby league fan it's great that Wigan seem to be back on track as the sport needs all it's top teams to be up there. It's going to be a very interesting season that's for sure.

Phil. You know you want to come over from the dark side, just admit it.