Will ask again, how can you in the same post label 11 gone Sailor excellent….but then say French would be average in the same post.

Just trying to understand your logic there.

I think Bevan French would improve most, not all, but NRL sides. As I never cease to gleefully explain to posters on Aussie sites, he is a much better and complete player than the guy who left Parramatta. And of course I'm delighted he's playing for Wigan.

That’s something that gets ignored. Guys like French, Field, Amone, Lam etc aren’t the same guys that left the NRL. They’ve now had regular first team rugby, have more experience and are better and more confident players.

It appears some of the knuckle draggers on other sport forums think that these contracts are being funded by the Latics.

Are we just going to completely ignore the 47 NRL games that French played in then where he scored 35 tries? And it was said at the time that the reason for him being dropped was a dosagreement with the coaching staff on what was his position.

He is definitely a better player now also than the one that joined from Parra, and in the last year he has seen massive improvements to the area of his game that was regarded as his weakness, which is his defence.

i'll disagree re Sneyd

he hasnt had a gig at a top club over here (Salford, Cas and Hull), and there must be a reason why. I'll admit on his day he can play (or kick), but i just dont think he is consistent enough within a game, let alone over the course of a season, hence why he's never gone to Wigan, Saints, Leeds etc

Yeah, they're being paid for by the minus £17.4m Latics made last year. The football club could have covered the rugby clubs full salary cap as part of that and they'd have still lost £15m or so.

Over the last couple of decades, some of them - and not just a few - have come to define their very existence as sports fans by the firm conviction (aka epic self-delusion) that Wigan RL only exist through the grace and favour of Wigan Athletic, and that at some in the near future the plug will be pulled. Why does no one else realise that we are entirely funded by a football club (who's previous owner didn't even know what RL was)? Why doesn't the rest of the sports world get it that the fact we don't own our own ground will at some point see us cast out (I guess the acquisition of the DW by Mike Danson, our new owner, slipped past them).

It's quite funny to watch embittered little fools make even bigger fools of themselves with posts like these. But there's some sadness there too. It betrays a flawed but deeply embedded mindset which holds that an RL club can't have the wherewithal and integrity to achieve the things Wigan have without some mysterious outside assistance.

There was a genuine hope out there that when David Whelan commenced his well-funded football experiment in Wigan, the RL club, which had dominated the local sports scene for a century, would simply fold. I suppose I can understand certain quarters' disappointment when that didn't happen, but it's now taken on genuinely surreal dimensions. After IL stepped down, a Saints-supporting friend of mine rang up to ask if it was true that Wigan Athletic had finally bought out Wigan Warriors.

Yes, really.

The story doing the rounds outside Wigan was so far from what had actually happened (Latics hanging by a thread, not having a pot to p### in etc), that I was too flummoxed to give him a coherent answer. And even now, it seems, it's going on. If nothing else, though, at least we're all used to it.

We almost see a microcosm of that here at Wigan now and again. We produce far more players of SL quality than can realistically get into our team. Some of them aged 27-28 look the real deal after being let go in their early 20s, but that's only after they've played 150 games at a Salford or a Huddersfield.

So that's 6 players so far. You may add another 10 from other clubs and that would be it. There would be a hell of a lot more NRL players who would walk into SL teams. You can discount Hull, Cas and London and my team Leigh, at the moment, with the horrendous injury list. So there are only 8 teams fighting for a top 6 spot, and only 2 of them have a chance of winning the GF or playing at the same intensity as the NRL - Saints and Wiggin.

The NRL have 17 teams who play at that intensity every week.

I can't see other SL teams catching up to Saints and Wiggin to be honest. And with IMG removing relegation some teams are happy to tick their finance and social media boxes rather than build a team strong enough to compete.