cadoo wrote:Without a decent set of forwards our halfbacks will do nothing. We got away with it a bit more with such a world class player like Trent Barrett but at the moment we don't have that. We have potential with Sam Tomkins but he is not up to Trent's standard and wont be able to demonstrate (and in some ways develop) behind a beaten pack. Thomas Leuluai equally is only very young and behind a beaten pack will not offer us much.
I agree with your assessment of the type of second rower we need. I don't think we ever replaced Bryan Fletcher. He brought us experience and a lot of go forward. Phil Bailey is not a patch on Bryan Fletcher. Although Phil's form has improved of late I still don't think it compensates offering him a contract after three years of being more of a squad/average player and from your overseas players you expect better. I would agree with calls to offer him another contract for a year had there not been better standard players available but there are. David Kidwell and Frank Puletua are both out of contract at the end of the year and are exactly the type of players we need to replace Gareth Hock and Phil Bailey. After all if we're going to compete with Saints and Leeds over the course of the full season we need to improve throughout our squad - just re-signing Phil Bailey and Andy Coley is not going to do so. The salary cap is no excuse because with the loss of Tim Smith, Coley, Bailey and Gareth Hock we should have a lot more space.
Right now we have an average pack. In order to improve we need to either develop from within players of a higher standard - or higher potential or bring in players who are better currently that what we have.
Andy Coley should not be offered another contract. His form has improved but has only improved from average. Compare him to the likes of Graham, Puletua, Peacock, Burgess, Ferriol (Sp) Morley, Carvell, LMS, Lynch, Vella etc and he comes up very average. We don't have a pack leader. The best two sides in the league do - Leeds with Jamie Peacock and Saints with James Graham. I don't think we have players who have that potential at the club so we will have to look abroad. Whether there are players of that standard available in the NRL I don't know but we seem to have an act of making players available - Amos Roberts and Mark Riddell. Talks of releasing Carl Webb early - would he be the answer? Would he be an improvement from Coley? I don't see enough of the NRL to know but I would guess that he is better than Andy Coley quite easily. So the signing would be an improvement and should be made if possible.
We have been inconsistent and average for a good number of the years and when players contracts are up we should be looking to promote players from within who have a greater potential or more ideally who are already better - hence loan spells at other clubs are useful - Scott Moore for Saints or if there is no-one from within who would be an improvement then we have to spend and look for players who will improve the squad because at the moment ours is average. I think we have had plenty of time to look for a prop forward and still don't have one. Time is running out for the club to be so meticulous in its approach to signing a forward because we are trailing behind.
You are correct we do need forwards for our half-backs to play behind. Alot of people have said that we will never win anything with Leuluai at 7 but I am now thinking we could with a good pack as his form has improved this season. I would love for us to sign a new hafl-back but only when the pack is sorted.
Fletcher is the most underated player to play for Wigan in the super league era, he always made the hard yards. Your right we have never replaced him. Bailey is average and Fletcher was a top player.
You are again spot on with the sort of player we need, those two would be ideal and I think unlike most of the suggestions on here, they are realistic IMO, but will IL look down that route, I don't think so.
We should have enough cap space to improve and you have actually made me agree with you we should release both Coley and Bailey to bring new players in as even with the improvement they are still not good enough for Wigan.
We should promote from within which is why we should fill one of the spaces left by bailey and Hock with Mossop and Farrell maybe rotating or something, maybe Mossop deserves a first team spot, he is better than Hanson IMO.
We should of had this wrapped up by not, Tronc would of been great along with Puletua but Cayless would also be fantastic.
