Re: Jerome Luai : Thu Oct 31, 2024 8:18 am  

NickyKiss wrote:

The talk that Wigan spend more than anyone else came on the back of that Sky piece during their coverage of one of the games and tbh, I thought it was a little naughty because it it was a bit of guesswork and ultimately everyone is playing under the exact same rules, restrictions and dispensations. Wigan are good with the Sky team and give them access not all clubs do, so I'd have expected a bit more from them in return.

I don't know why you would? We've never had any real good will from the Sky team.

Whether it dates back to having a Saints supporter and Leeds supporter - Eddie and Stevo - calling the shots for so many years, and finding fault with every single try that Wigan scored, or Phil Clark bending over backwards to prove that he wasn't a Wigan fan (even to the point of saying all Shaun Wane's trophies were due to Wigan spending more money than anyone else - despite the salary cap!), I don't know, but they've never been our friends.

But even if that was the case, and we were somehow, mysteriously allowed to spend more cash, I say it again - so what? It's nothing to do with anyone else. Super League is a professional sport, not a charity. So long as it's within the rules, it should be of no interest to anyone else. You might get your reward in heaven for a being a poverty row club, but you're not going to get it on the sports field. There's nothing innately honourable about having no money to spend at this level of the game. You're simply out of your depth.

Re: Jerome Luai : Thu Oct 31, 2024 10:15 am  

Cruncher wrote:

I don't know why you would? We've never had any real good will from the Sky team.

Whether it dates back to having a Saints supporter and Leeds supporter - Eddie and Stevo - calling the shots for so many years, and finding fault with every single try that Wigan scored, or Phil Clark bending over backwards to prove that he wasn't a Wigan fan (even to the point of saying all Shaun Wane's trophies were due to Wigan spending more money than anyone else - despite the salary cap!), I don't know, but they've never been our friends.

But even if that was the case, and we were somehow, mysteriously allowed to spend more cash, I say it again - so what? It's nothing to do with anyone else. Super League is a professional sport, not a charity. So long as it's within the rules, it should be of no interest to anyone else. You might get your reward in heaven for a being a poverty row club, but you're not going to get it on the sports field. There's nothing innately honourable about having no money to spend at this level of the game. You're simply out of your depth.

The difference was buttons anyway in the grand scheme of things (I think we were 100k higher than 2nd and 3rd) but I'd have liked Wigan to call them out on it. There was only ever going to be one end result from it and that was that fans across the game would say Wigan are spending their way to trophies again. It could've been an extra quid and it still wouldn't have mattered.

Re: Jerome Luai : Thu Oct 31, 2024 4:41 pm  

NickyKiss wrote:

The difference was buttons anyway in the grand scheme of things (I think we were 100k higher than 2nd and 3rd) but I'd have liked Wigan to call them out on it. There was only ever going to be one end result from it and that was that fans across the game would say Wigan are spending their way to trophies again. It could've been an extra quid and it still wouldn't have mattered.

Basically, it's tough ###t on them. They're just going to have to lump it. The tide is moving against the salary cap ... not massively so, but there's a definite shift. And under Mike Danson, Wigan are not going to suddenly turn off the tap.

It will be interesting to see, if Wigan do start to clean up on a regular basis, how the other top clubs respond. The last time this happened, they were woeful. None of them stepped up to the plate, and that halcyon age only ended because, among other things, Wigan found a collapsing coal mine under the new stand, which soaked up all the spare cash. That came as well as overspending on certain players, it has to be said, though the lack of interest across the game due to no one else being capable of giving Wigan a match was also an issue, as crowds had inevitably started to dwindle.