Re: TV Games - Not Hull : Tue Oct 08, 2024 11:20 am
hatty wrote:
Not sure where this financial advantage comes from? It was a case of speculate to accumulate, everyone could have done what we did, but we were the only club with the bottle to do it.
Don't think that's quite the whole picture here.
In the late 80s the Wigan board (Lindsey and a couple of business partners I believe) made a hefty injection of cash into the club, at a level well beyond most other club's reach at the time.
The end result of this investment was that by the early 90s Wigan were operating a full-time squad within what was then still ostensibly a part-time sport. I believe Leeds were moving towards a similar model as the winter era came to a close, but virtually every other club in the game at that time simply didn't have access to that level of funding, even if the wish to do so was there. Certainly was the case with Hull Fc who hit financial difficulties as the decade wore on.
I don't deny that it was forward thinking by the Wigan board, and it did produce a superb team arguably the best club side the British game has seen, but it was unquestionably operating in an uneven playing field, hence my point above about your achievements when set against, say, Penrith's four successive NRL titles in a salary capped competition.
The equivalent today would be expecting championship football sides to compete with Manchester City. I admired the Wigan side 1990-95 and respected the raising of standards and new professionalism they brought to British rugby league, but the caveat remains that it happened against diminished opposition. They weren't tested often enough because the rest of us were incapable of putting together a team to compete.
