I remember every Hull fan slating Tevita Vaikona when he left for Bradford , a year after Steve McNamara had. I was speaking to McNamara at a sportsman's dinner and what he said made perfect sense. RL is a short career, if you're lucky enough to avoid serious injury, and you're looking for another career pretty much from the age of 32 . Nobody can begrudge players maximising the wages they earn during this time, sentiment aside as they generally don't all become coaches and end up retraining for secular employment , outside of the game. All those fans, who speak from their heart disagree with that he said, those that speak with their heads understand, however much they do not like it. Pretty much summed it up for me .

yes, didnt see anyone saying Danson wont invest any money

We werent when Lydon and Hanley came

Fans demand loyalty from players but want rid as soon as a player’s form drops. Loyalty should be a 2 way street but in sport it isn’t. Players are all too aware of this having seen colleagues or even themselves slated by fans of their team live or on social media.

I wonder how many of our supporters who gave him abuse week after week on the terraces are now up in arms for allegedly not coming back to us.

I know a few of em

There may be a number of reasons why Wigan haven't been able to secure GW's signing. One of which may be that we had already agreed deals for our big signings next season (prop + half back) not yet announced. The Mole announced a few months ago that Wigan were in the market for a NRL prop.

I'm not talking about these rumoured signings that have come lately, if there's any truth in these they are likely to be 'top up signings'.

Lets not forget that GW leaving Canberra was a bolt out of the blue, was expected to stay in Aus until 2023 at least.

We'd lost George Burgess at the beginning of the season, Hastings announced he was leaving at the end of this season. Plans were already in place with agents two months ago.

We could simply be just a victim of timing.

Yeah but I abuse every player

I am inclined to agree here. I also believe we won’t know any different if he signs elsewhere and we’ll move on, as we have done already, without him. Plus each player has their worth. Perhaps we didn’t believe he was worth the money Wire were offering, which I can imagine was astronomical.

My only questions to your post would be; why wait to announce it? We knew we were in for a prop weeks ago and props come relatively cheaply - surely that isn’t making it so our budget is so stretched we can’t sign GW?

I can also agree with the point that our recruitment is worrying with 3 Championship quality players allegedly inbound to a club that wants to remain challenging for titles and cups. It’s concerning for me as with the coach we have, the players we have been linked with (if not signed) and the dreadful playing style we have currently; i just can’t believe we’ll be anything other than a 5th-8th place team sooner rather than later if this continues. Far from doom mongering I think some people may need to take their blinkers off and realise the gravity of it.

This isn’t because we haven’t signed GW, even securing his signature I’d still be concerned. Rather the general direction of the club that for my money just appears lost like a ship without a rudder. Some poor recruitment/retention decisions have and are being made which need to be rectified.

Generally the club seem poor in managing the expectations of supporters to the point that it can affect the bottom line in the form of ticket sales. Our recruitment so far has not been impressive and the overall impression is that the club is in some form of managed decline. At the same time Warrington seem to have a blank cheque and the kind of pull that we just cannot manage. Once that decline sets in it takes something major to halt the cycle. Even when we can get decent players to sign they seem to be using us as a stepping stone. A couple of good signings will paper over the cracks but the club needs a rethink from the bottom up.

Has anything actually been announced? I just keep hearing nothing has been sorted for GW yet.

I won't pretend I'm not disappointed, though all along I said that we have other holes to plug in this team.

In the salary cap era, you can't really make luxury purchases at the expense of essential ones.

It would be nice, though, if we announced a really stonking signing from somewhere.

The Wigan fans have had a rough new months since that Grand Final disappointment. All the talk has been injuries, departures, star players underperforming, and there's still no land in sight when it comes to piling in for home fixture full houses again. We must be due something.

Full houses? We can't even sell 6000 season tickets.

All reasons we would be in pole position IMO, rather than a club maxing the cap who'd have to do some restructuring just to fit GW, also when you consider he is VFM in terms of cap due to being home grown....

Probably all irrelevant now

The ongoing impact of the drop in season ticket numbers will be clearer once we have a season that has certainty post pandemic. I would think that a proportion of the c.3000 people that didn't renew chose not to buy a season ticket as it was a leap of faith to buy one. We had no idea how many home games we would be able to attend or how many will be able to attend each of those (and we still can't be certain to some extent due to the latest Covid variant). I did renew mine but I wouldn't blame anyone that chose not to when they didn't know what value they would get out of the purchase. Just how many of those 3000 fans return to being regular attendees post pandemic will determine how the club is affected mid to long term.