I acknowledged it will be a joint decision making process in my post but the point remains that Rads is the consistent figure across three different coaches. And unlike the coaches, recruitment and retention should be his main involvement in the performance of the first team.

Putting aside the finger of blame, the fact is Wigan as an organisation have recruited too many forwards who ultimately have been disappointing.

I don't know how much say Rads has in the actual player. Sounded to me like he is just there to ensure said player fits under the cap.

Lam for example chose to sign Sammut and almost demanded we did against the rest of the panels choices. Then he didn't pick him and instead picked players he was told weren't fit (hence my post about Jai and the different regime)

Ultimately, the coaching staff pick the players based on how they want us to play.

Our problem yesterday again was the amount of errors we made and ball we coughed up to a big pack.

Imagine if we pulled Owen Farrell out of the bag for next season. Now that would solve things for the short term.

I keep saying about OF that I'm not sure what he brings apart from kicking, but I think he'd make a great 13 in this current side.

Peet told me that he enjoys watching the NRL around Origin time as more squad players get a chance to play, players who would be available for SL.

So he’s involved in scouting.

I think that our biggest problems are an unbalanced squad and lack of experience in key areas.
We’ve got no really experienced HB. Hampshire is a fill in. Never in a month of Sundays will he a starting HB. As a FB he’s a liability.
Apart form Farrell no other real quality in the backrow.
I don’t particularly like using backs for hard yards as it covers ineffective forwards.
Cust, Field, Mago, Miski French and Ellis are all limited in terms of really good nrl experience. I love watching Field and French but without a good platform they cant deliver on a regular basis against well coached teams.
Walters isn’t the answer in terms of improving a weak front row. Better than Mago but nothing spectacular.
We need at least 3 really good experienced forwards to to make us competitive.
I think Powell only retains his place due to lack of experience elsewhere in the squad. For me he only keeps his place due to his experience.
Forber will be become our first choice 9 by 2024 at the latest.
Any thoughts of of a GF win for me are totally delusional.
Despite that negative rhetoric I’m still confident that if we can sign 3 experienced decent forwards we won’t be too far away in 2024.

You mean no history apart from last year?

I agree with most of the statement, but there seems to be an issue with the backs taking runs out of defence, I cant think of a recent successful team in the NRL that didnt have backs that laid the platform from defence to attack. Yesterday the commentators were admiring the Panthers backs efforts and noted that the pack only came into effect on around the fourth tackle when they were coming out of their half.

Not sure where this notion is that Smith has been a great goal kicker. Throughout his junior years I believe he was kicking at around the 70ish % mark.

Last season a lot of Wigan's tries were scored under the sticks or close to them- breakaways from Field/French whereas this season a lot more have been scored by your centres and finished by wingers in the corner.

He did kick at 100% throughout the 3 match Test series against Australia's Academy but he's never really got to those levels since.

Since this never got answered and as Jukes has pointed out without giving a figure, Harry smith kicked at 82% last year. Which would put him as tied 2nd most accurate kicker last season out of anybody with a noteable amound of conversions. It's also worth noting that he did kick more than either of the other 2 by quite a margin aswell.

Ratchford - 85% successful conversions, 75 attempts
Harry Smith - 82% successful conversions, 110 attempts
Chris Hankinson - 82% successful conversions, 77 attempts

There is a good kicker in there somewhere, and he proved it last season in my opinion. I agree with the comments about how he is a confidence player, and he seems to be lacking that at the moment in the kicking department. I would be all for giving him a break from the duties and letting somebody else take the burden until he feels he is ready to take it back up again. It seems like this thought may already be in motion within the team as didn't (i think) Field take one of the conversions at Magic?

I am not up for the idea of dropping him from the team though, he is playing behind a beaten and undermanned pack at the moment so his general effectiveness is likely to drop. I still see signs of him doing good stuff on the pitch, his in game kicking is still good, he is still thowing some good passes and assisting in the tries we score. I think dropping him all together could be a bigger rock to his confidence then just a temporary break from kicking. That's before you get onto who would replace him? Can't say i have too much confidence yet in Field and Cust after Magic, not convinces Field was fully fit myself.



Don't really buy into this notion if i am honest Stu, we did score our fair share of breakaway tries, but we also scored plenty on the edges too with our wingers scoring 52 tries between them. Saying he had mostly easy kicks is abit disingenuous imo and surely not to the level of elevating a kicker by 12ish%.

You can still have wingers scoring tries under the sticks though. It would be interesting to see exactly how many of his kicks last season were difficult ones. French would often score a breakaway try but still under the sticks.

This isn't true Stu. I remember saying last year that we score most of our tries out wide. Even if we had 10 break away tries that ended up under the sticks (and I'm being generous there as not all break away tries end up under the sticks as chasers back often force them out wide) it's still in single figures percent of his overall kicks taken. He still kicked way more from out wide than the next best kickers kicked in total! That's a sobering thought...

Quote: Stu M "You can still have wingers scoring tries under the sticks though. It would be interesting to see exactly how many of his kicks last season were difficult ones. French would often score a breakaway try but still under the sticks.'" Decide for yourself pal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB8fvoH ... ScoutingRL There may be a few more with his burst of speed closer to the sticks than your average winger, but not enough to be an outlier and many are still in the 1/3 of the pitch closest to the sideline. As a side note, what a year French had. That's just 1 season's of tries, and is probably better than most player's career highlight reel!

Quote: Stu M "You can still have wingers scoring tries under the sticks though. It would be interesting to see exactly how many of his kicks last season were difficult ones. French would often score a breakaway try but still under the sticks.'" Decide for yourself pal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB8fvoH ... ScoutingRL There may be a few more with his burst of speed closer to the sticks than your average winger, but not enough to be an outlier and many are still in the 1/3 of the pitch closest to the sideline. As a side note, what a year French had. That's just 1 season's of tries, and is probably better than most player's career highlight reel!

Smith was statistically the best kicker in SL last year
Smith kicked them from all over the shop last year Inc. More than his fair share from out wide