Very true BLM, Wakefield as an area produce as many juniors as Wigan but the area gets pillaged by everyone.

Trinity actually do very well in the face of overwhelming odds!

Public knowledge and not exactly the crime of the century, albeit still wrong.

[iWigan Warriors have been fined £1,000 after being found guilty of minor breaches of the RFL Academy and Scholarship registration procedure and timetable.

Wigan were deemed to be in breach of RFL Operational Rules C1:7:4 and C1:7:5 in signing three Under-16s players prior to the deadline of Monday July 6 2015.

Rule C1:7:4 states that a club may not approach (either directly or indirectly) a player who is registered with another club until the first Monday in July in the year his current registration expires.; Rule C1:7:5 states that a Club may not approach (either directly or indirectly) a player who it wishes to recruit for the following Academic Year until the first Monday in July.

£500 of the £1,000 fine has been suspended until the end of the 2016 season.[/i

Wonder how poor Eddie is bearing up !!

If true, I'm out of the 1873 lottery - pointless.

How would that hurt Wigan?

The only losers in that are Wakefield Trinity

Superb analysis of what's going on in the junior game from BLM and The Avenger.
The big clubs get the praise for producing juniors, because they know they can 'bend' the rules to sign a player from outside of their area, with only a minimal penalty.
But you wouldn't want the same teams in the hunt for the Grand Final and Wembley every year would you? Or would you RFL?

Exactly

I'm just saying what's the point in 1873 if we can't hold onto the young players once we have brought them on?

If everyone left on mass then it would be even harder holding onto the ones who do sign up with the club.

The real issue is their pathway to the first team. What's the point in an academy if the club are reluctant to use the players who do come through the ranks and stay loyal only to see sh.ite like Jordan Tansey get in ahead of them.

Hard not to agree with that as well.

Because it still allows us to bring some through
Crowther
Jowitt
Johnstone

Wigan & Leeds have and will always cheat the system but despite that we have always managed to develop some excellent players. If our supporters stop supporting via initiatives such as 1873 then we become less able to compete for players and less capable of developing the ones we get while making Wigan and Leeds job easier.

What is the point of people dipping into their pockets to help with junior development when the club throw money away on totally pointless signings of senior players. The amount of money we are paying to first team passengers would give us a very good junior set up.