I agree and that the salaries offered to entice players over to the NRL are excessive, and even though KPP is a very talented young kid then £400K per season is a ridiculous amount of money.
It will be interesting to see if it is money well spent by the Knights or if he eventually gets cut down the line to free up salary cap space

Converting KPPs salary to GBP is irrelevant as their salary cap is miles higher so its no comparison.

His reported salary next year is about 8% of the salary cap. Equivalent % in England would be £168k per year which doesn't sound out of the question if he is one of your best players? £168K would probably put him in the top 3-5 earners at a club like Wigan, Saints, Warrington I would guess?

Wonder which academy players will join the first team squad next year ?

Junior and Hill will replace Cooper and Isa but who will replace them?

Kian McDermott, Lukas Mason and Taylor Kerr all seem to England academy regulars. A proper, a backrower and a loose forward.

Wonder if they are seen as big prospects?

I remember Nathan Lowe a winger/centre joined the first team in preseaon whilst Marshall was away.

Not seen much of McDermott but in the bits I've seen of the other two, I've always been hugely impressed with Kerr. He looks a real talent, with good hands and will be a good size once he fills out. I've never seen much in Mason to think he'll go on and become a top player but he might've just had quiet games in the ones I've seen. The other who always impressed me is Tom Ratchford, a young hooker. He will have a lot of players to get past at Wigan in the next few years mind.

Ratchford was the best Wigan player by far in the Academy play off semi last season and always impresses me, what’s his contract situation at the club?

Ratchford is likely to play on Friday.

Rightfully so as well. This is why we have reserve/junior sides. We need a hooker so play 1

Shifting players and playing a non hooker there would weaken us much more IMO

Rightfully so as well. This is why we have reserve/junior sides. We need a hooker so play 1

Shifting players and playing a non hooker there would weaken us much more IMO

My worry was how ready he would be for the step up, especially stepping up into a game like a derby game vs. Saints in front for a 20k+ crowd.

But if Peet believes that he is ready then i trust his judgement 100%, i think he has probably earned that

He's been hugely impressive whenever I've watched him Ratchford. I'd probably just hold him back slightly and use him from the bench, with maybe Faz going in at 9 for the early part of the game but I've no doubt Ratchford can make an impact when he comes on. I just hope he backs himself and plays his natural game because if he can get out of dummy half and take the line on, he'll cause them plenty of problems.

Ratchford not in the squad which is a blow for him personally, also seen a rumour Forber is signing for Salford from next season.

Saw that with Forber. It's a shame to lose him but it's obviously been coming and I think Salford get a potentially good superleague player there. I think it's time Wigan starting asking them for something towards the running costs of our academy.

As for Ratchford, if he's available, I guess they think he's not quite ready physically. He's certainly not the biggest. I'm not sure if he's still eligible for the academy games but I did notice he wasn't involved in our game at the weekend, so maybe he's injured (if it's not just a case of being too old).

Not a reliable source the lad of twitter.

It would make sense though

i suppose the good thing for us will be the lack of turnover and continuity in playing squad, with it likely Cooper and Isa from 1st team to move on, and perhaps 1 or 2 fringe players.

Hull have a massive turnover, Leigh appear to be losing and signing lots, Salford losing players, Leeds announced several players to leave

so given our continuity i would expect us to hit the ground running next season and not be too disrupted as we have in recent years, with replacing key positions seemingly every season

We signed both Eseh and Chan to bring them into
Our system to give us a year to replace Cooper and Isa.

Gave us time to get them into our system and mindset.

I’m not convinced about Chan I think he’s is struggling with the transition from a middle forward and wouldn’t be concerned if he left as long as we replace him with another secondrow.

As mentioned on another thread I wouldn’t be against Davies from Saints however I think he will rightfully be looking for guaranteed first team rugby next year which we won’t give him.