Chairman's address

Quote: DaveO "The parts of the speech about the commercial side and the move to Robin Park were pretty positive. He seems to have a clear vision about the financial side of it but there are issues like the falling season ticket sales.

Whether taking games to far flung places which IL sees as gaining sponsorship is linked in any way to these falling season ticket sales is hard to say. I think he needs to be careful because whenever we have to move games be it because the pitch needs re-laying (again), because Latics have a game on or because he is chasing sponsorship I don't think it helps. It's confounded by things out of his control like Sky switching games but it all adds up to a general dissatisfaction and makes people question the financial wisdom of buying a season ticket. Add in lacklustre team performances and a competition structure that some thinks means only a few games matter and perhaps this is not surprising but taking away even a single home game doesn't help when you have these other factors in play.

I thought what he had to say over the performance of the team was very poor. At least he acknowledged what most fans have been saying which is that things have been getting worse for the last three seasons however the excuses do not add up. As he said himself we had a purple patch for four years under Madge then Wane's first two years. What he didn't mention was that success was off the back of some great entertaining RL. So when he said he wants to know if there is more to it than win at all costs he is missing the point because these objectives are not mutually exclusive. We won by playing a far more entertaining brand of RL [ibecause it was far more skillful[/i. As someone else said we had players running off the ball and were not playing the one man rugby we see today to give just one example.

In contrast since (we are told) we adopted the win at all costs strategy things have [iactually got worse[/i. He said himself three years of decline and we have won half the number of trophies in the last four years than in the first four. This season in particular has been dire and instead of setting positive records we set some like the worst number of defeats in the league for 30 years. So the excuse this is down to Wane being told to win at all costs doesn't wash. There has been enough evidence over the last three seasons it has been failing for something to have been done about it by now.

He then commented that despite this we have been in several grand finals and lost a CC final so relatively this isn't really that bad. That comment could have been lifted off the Ancient & Loyal facebook page happy clappers club. Yes, compared to the likes of Leigh we do not have their problems so to some it might seem churlish to complain but that is the whole point. With the resources we have we expect success and skillful play. Not dire wrestling based one man RL that doesn't actually deliver the "win at all costs" objective - the actual wins!

So when he says this relative "success" doesn't mean sackings I think he is being far too accepting of the situation. He mentioned himself the fact Madge took virtually the same team to success which is something I constantly mention to justify us getting a new coach now. He seems to have forgotten to get the same group of players to perform he had to get rid of Noble. If he wants season ticket sales not to slide further things need to change which isn't to a move to a style of RL that looks flashy but doesn't deliver success but to get back to playing skillful RL that does. I am not convinced Wane is the man to achieve this nor do I have his apparent faith in the coaching staff to get the same group of players to perform.'"

You and I disagree to an extent about Shaun Wane but I thought your post was fair and well balanced.

Where I do agree with you is about season ticket sales and the effect of taking games away from Wigan for a variety of reasons. You don't for example, find Leeds trying these things out. It seems to me that Hetherington has his eyes firmly on the playing side of things and doesn't get involved so much in marketing projects.