Charnley was one of the best players on the pitch last night. He had a great game and got us out of a lot of trouble at times.

If he's been able to use his contacts and influence to land blue chip players, like Johns and Inglis, who otherwise wouldn't have looked twice at us then that's good. I don't think Johns and Inglis are responsible for us to be failing to get over the line.

Which other 'Football manager' type signings, has Simon Moran supposedly been forcing on the club? Are there any stories about this in the press or is this just one of those where people on this forum invent their own reality about goings on behind the scenes, like when Agar was here, and his remit varied from putting out the cones to player recruitment to spoiling our attack or whatever, depending on what we needed to hold him responsible for.

I'm not sure which 'Football manager' type players we are blaming Simon Moran for having undue influence in us signing? Is it Morley? Hodgson? Ratchford? Myler? the Monaghans? Daryl Clark? Charnley? Austin? Widdop? Inglis?

Good old sally, playing devil's advocate.

I'm just wondering who Oasis and Take That's concert promoter's s contacts in the rugby league world, are.
Call me cynical, but I'd rather take Cullen and Price's contacts, rather than a bloke who's adverts appear in the classified section of the NME. After all, that's what Moran (and Middleton) employ coaches for, in the first place.
What's next? Moran organising set plays (if we have any), or tactics to actually win the GF?

Hasn't Inglis been signed as a 'gift' to the fans?... he was, and could still be, a great player, but it doesn't exactly smack of a long term plan. More a vanity project to get the club more headlines... Johns signing was the same - all about the headlines.

I'd even suggest the signing of Joel Monaghan was an unneeded (at the time) signing and more about the attention it got, considering he was brought in for a guy who had just scored a hat trick in a CC final.

Throw in the Luther Burrell signing, which nobody at he club has ever tried to explain the logic of. Again, it just smacked of another pointless gamble which garnered a few headlines.

The whole point is that Mr Moran should not be anywhere near the recruitment of players and the building of the squad.

(bar Monaghan) If ever a emoji deserved a x1000 elevation, this is it

I'm still scratching my head over the Inglis signing. Yes, it gets us media presence (in the RL press). Ask your regular punter who reads the printed press, or looks at BBC/Sky Sports website, tomorrow, and they'll say "Greg who? What does he do??" it's been forgotten about, already
He's famous to people like us, RL fans. He's....
Retired
Dodgy knees
Signed at the time when there were NO GAMES, let alone spectators clicking turnstiles.

I hope it works
I WANT it to work
I've got more doubts than Brian Unsure. The most sceptical man who's unsure about what his name is

Inglis isn’t going to be the answer. This time last year, Widdop was going to be.

A few good shows and a few shirt sales.

Back in the cold cold days of Wilderspool we got pie &peas and watched a rugby match, we enjoyed it win lose or draw because that was where we were at. Now we move forward to today we have a great stadium and good facilities but it’s no longer about the game on the field.


I use to go to the fans forum I didn’t attend after the last one I went to, someone asked me that one time but I felt it was not the right time to answer, now I’ve changed my mind.

In that meeting the subject was fan entertainment, so I spoke up and said that’s dependant upon what is going on on the pitch, the answer I got is we are trying to move away from that, to say I was gobsmacked is an understatement. So I asked would you rather me sitting there clapping when we are getting beat 80-0. Well apparently it’s about the whole day now from when you enter the ground to have a fun day basically.

Well I’ve always said it, sport at any high level that depends on fans needs winning teams fans are fickle if results are bad they stopping going, putting jedward on won’t keep them there, infact as I recall some ppl left after they had done their bit. Anyway my point is you want a larger crowd you need a winning team.

I was in sport a lot in my time and always played to win that is ingrained in me, some of the posts I read on here are ppl just happy to be 2nd best.

PS never went to that game couldn’t stomach seeing that pair of pillocks.

Read some of the comments about our attack and some saying about playing off the cuff etc, And we have no structured moves, now this is probably where the answer to Briers situation he was a maverick and a great exponent of off the cuff rugby, the kind of player he was does not come around often, Ive always said your George Best, Alex Higgins etc moment, maybe that is a cause to why we have no if any set plays and you can’t teach what he was if so Patton would of been the next Briers, you can’t teach maverick, well I don’t think so.

Get the coach right and the rest has the greatest chance of following.

Brian McDermot for me.

Price was a 3rd or 4th choice option, and just like the player comparisons; for every Tony Smith there’s a Steve Price.

Admittedly Smith stayed/was allowed to stay for too long

Off the cuff and maverick? What does it actually mean? Players don’t do things that they have never done before it’s just that they have more skills, quicker brain etc etc.

It’s like all the other sound bites of ‘forwards win games and backs dictate by how many’. Just a dim view that’s reinforced weekly by Baz and Tez

Really it just means a player can see what's in front of them in defensive structure and numbers and they have an ability to react very quickly to the opportunities that they see. Briers was very good at this. Brough has it too and Luke gale, sandow was great when his head was on it.

Regarding the next coach (if the club ate even thinking baoht this at the moment) maybe with the whole covid and flights situation as it is, this time it won't be Kirkpatrick disappearing to Australia to knock on front doors trying tonubearth a new coach or new marquee player (I always view it as being a little bit like sending Carl Pilkington). I honestly think we would havebeeb better off looking at signing the likes of jake Trueman or even throwing some serious cash at Harry Smith and giving Anderson or henderson a chance at head coach (if they would want it). I'm not writing off Riley Dean BTW I really like what I have seen from him so far, I'm talking more about the results of the past 3 seasons searching.

This might appear as a minor point when compared to the importance of the coach, but I think the more youngsters that come through the academy into the first team, the stronger the side will be. These kids will play for the shirt and run themselves into the ground for the team. I think it's a bit of a tribal mentality. That's not the same commitment that I think you get when you import a big star, particularly one from abroad. At the end of the day they are professionals first and players second. Their livelihood is uppermost in their minds even if they still wan't a cup winners medal as well.

The right coach is certainly the key factor, but I think getting high quality from our Academy is probably the next most important.

All the more reason to bring in someone who gives youth a chance and picks on form. If we had the next Paul Sculthorpe ripping it up in the reserves competing directly with Jason Clark for a jersey, who do you think would get the nod?

Given how good Monaghan was for us I’m baffled as to why he is being used as an example of a poor “Moran signing” especially as we don’t even know if that was Moran who pushed for it.

I wasn't suggesting he was a bad signing. I was more suggesting that at the time he was a typical Wire signing of getting someone in who would create some headlines (we don't really need to go over the reason he ended up here?).

It wasn't like at that exact moment a winger was desperately needed?

We kinda did, spider was on his last legs, and had been considering retiring.

The way we did it allowed him to get a full years salary as a pay off and it not count on the salary cap, as was mentioned at the time, he was probably coming over for 2012 when hicks retired anyway. We just got him 12 months early.

He wasn't going anywhere until his canine indiscretion.

Look, my point isn't that Monaghan wasn't a good signing, just he was typical of the type of signing that we have become infamous for. As another poster has already said, we are an agent's dream. It would be little surprise if we get first option on most players (domestic or overseas) who are after a 'fresh move' (code for more cash).

While these type of high profile, fantasy footy, style signings are exciting they have done little but just put a bigger target on our backs. As has been mentioned already, the actual route we should be taking is making our academy the best in the league. With that in place, a proper director of rugby instead of one playing Facebook games, and a top level coach installed, then we might actually see some long term consistency with our results.

I still don’t get your point on Monaghan. He was a success so what’s the issue? He became available when he wouldn’t otherwise have been and we replaced a quality player coming to the end of his career with another quality player who we got a good few years out of.

I agree that we don’t produce enough good young players but I’m wondering if that’s partly due to not having the amateur RL footprint that our competitors have? I’m not sure how the club solves that.

The point is, from the outside, during the Moran era, we have always looked like a club that prefers a high profile signing, rather than one that wants to invest as significantly in its academy and the production of more lower profile individuals.

Kevin penny when smith didn't want him....

Yes on blue chip signings someone like middleton or moran may have some involvement but it should be a player the coach has asked for not just a signing because they want to see them in a wire shirt.

This gets said a lot but I don't see any real evidence that it's related to whether a player came from the academy.

During my time as a Wire fan we've generally been behind Wigan, Leeds, Saints in terms of the share of regular first teamers that came through our own academy, but there were two periods where we did have a lot of Academy products in the team.

One was in the earlier Cullen era where we had Hilton, Paul Wood, Stevens, Noone, Wainwright, Sibbitt, Mark Gleeson, Hulse and then he introduced Pickersgill and Riley.

The second was in the later TS era where we had Cooper, Currie, Evans, O'Brien, Ormsby, Penny, Patton, Livett, King, Philbin, Dwyer.

Some of these players were good, some were ordinary, some would obviously run into the ground for the shirt, others were just run of the mill in terms of attitude. But I don't remember thinking in these eras that these guys were noticeably better than the players around them or noticeably more committed.

I think there is an important point around doing due diligence when you sign a big star, either from the NRL or SL. I remember reading something about Sir Alex Ferguson's approach to recruitment, that he never followed a 'galactico' approach and the one obvious time he did (Juan Sebastian Veron) didn't work out. He liked to sign players on the way up who had the hunger to win things, rather than players who had already won a lot and were mentally in a position where they could have coasted.

Sometimes Wire have been in a position where we have signed players who had won SL or NRL Grand Finals, and we thought it was great we are getting someone with 'winning experience' but they probably looked at Warrington and thought we're probably not going to win a GF, it's more about securing a good contract (maybe the last big contract they will get in their careers). With some recent NRL signings I've wondered whether we were really just signing players who were out of contract, couldn't get what they wanted from an NRL club and their agent wanted to park them in SL for a year or two on a good deal, hoping a club with a vacancy in their position would have more cap space a couple of years down the line.

Some big stars have great attitudes and bring that wherever they go. Jamie Peacock won everything at Bradford, went to Leeds and wanted to achieve more. We had that with Adrian Morley, Brett Hodgson. In the NRL you get a certain type of Aussie competitor personality, who even if they aren't a big name, will identify with the team they are in and buy in: Greg Mackey, Nat Wood, Chris Hicks. These are well worth finding.

I think we need to do a lot more due diligence into the attitudes of players that we target and not just get hoodwinked into agents' marketing, but I don't think this is an issue about whether players come from the Academy or not. If we had an Academy that produced better talent (better than those players listed above) then in a salary-cap constrained league its an advantage because we'd always have a pool of low-cost young players to bring into the squad, and even when they get future contracts, its easier to keep a unit together like Leeds did, where most of those individuals were paid less than they could have done had they gone to other clubs (inevitably the odd one will leave like Calderwood did). Although if you do produce world class stars like Harris and Scully you can't expect to keep them on the cheap in a team that's not competing at the top, just because they came through the Academy.

When you play a side like Wigan the homegrown players, particularly from Warrington, will see it as a must win game. The imports, particularly from abroad will simply see it as another match. So if we can get the quality we need through the Academy, you are immediately handed a major advantage in terms of both attitude and effort. The problem of course is that over the past 10 years or so we have seen rugby league dribbling away as a sport of choice for UK kids, so the quality is not there and we are forced to buy it in. That's expensive, a short lived fix, and unsustainable for most clubs. Add in the duds like Asotasi, or the couldn't be bothered to get fit, or the homesick who stay for a year, or the guys who like other botanical products, or the olympic ice skaters that "always wanted to try RL" etc and it becomes a very hit and miss game.

So when do you define the start of the 'Moran era'?
Do you mean when he first became a director in 1998 or when he took ownership in 2004?

Before he became a director in 1998 we were the club that was selling off our Academy products Harris, Sculthorpe), and chasing signings like Andy Currier, Martin Dermott, Mike Ford, Richie Eyers, Paul Hulme. I'm not sure this was a particularly long-term mentality.

In the years between 1998 and 2004, we were a club who went for ageing internationals: Allan Hunte, Allan Langer, Andrew Gee, Tawera Nikau, Kevin Walters and ageing not-internationals Steve Georgallis, Paul Marquet, Matt Rodwell.

After Simon Moran took ownership, the recruitment policy stepped up a notch. Instead of it being just players winding down their careers wanted we started targeting top players who were still in their prime: Gleeson, Morley, Hodgson, King, the Monaghans, and also started signing young talent from other clubs' academies: Bridge, Grix, Harrison. I don't remember anybody ever saying that these guys were not putting the effort in because they had come from other clubs academies rather than our own.

Also in the Cullen and later TS era there were a lot of young home grown players given their chance. In my view, some of them got a lot more chances with us than they would have done, had they been at one of the top clubs, and you can use the lefty critique about us being too nice, with the number of first team games that guys like Evans and Patton got with us.

If you compare our record at winning trophies and making finals in the years since Simon Moran has been owner it is on a different scale to what it has been before.

So I don't think its fair to say that this is a problem that is related to Simon Moran's involvement.

For me the two relevant problems here are:

a) We lag behind the top clubs in producing [ireal talent[/i in the Academy. We've churned out a lot of so-so SL standard players and been willing to give them chances, but only Wood, Cooper, Currie and Riley really worthy of being in a title-challenging team.

b) The recruitment of outside players improved from 2004 to 2013 but has gone backwards since. Recruitment has become harder for all clubs as the market from the NRL has tightened and there's real scarcity of props and halfbacks but some other clubs (Wigan, Cas, Salford) have been notably better than us at finding underrated gems. Wigan in particular signed a number of players that we scoffed at like Blake Green, Matty Smith, but then went on to win Grand Finals. The quality of recruitment also seemed to decline after Andy Gatcliffe left.

I think there is a real danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water. This season isn’t over yet, why are people talking like it is? Where is that desire to win?
I enjoyed the game on Friday as a contest between 2 very committed teams. We were dominant in the first half and didn’t get the rewards that the effort deserved but it was fine margins between scoring and not, some days you hold the ball sometimes you lose it (or it gets dislodged). Wigan showed on 2 clear occasions that they were prepared to risk everything to prevent a try (I’m still unclear why the second didn’t warrant yellow) but this isn’t a rant about refs.
Of course I was disappointed by the result and the efforts of our halfbacks in particular, Widdop was a real curates egg, Austin MIA.
The reality is that our squad is fixed for this season and at this late stage so is our coach.
So my answer to the question is “ we don’t go anywhere”. Price is aware as the rest of us that to keep his job and any future r3turn to the NRL he needs to win big. There is still a chance to do it. The squad for Tuesday shows changes that I had hoped to see (maybe not Akouala), buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.


(Personally I would be casting out feelers for a new coach if I was in charge, just in case.)

“where do we go from here.”



Well, I for one am going to get that haircut, got to stay one haircut in front these days.

Wherever we go, let’s not go to the same place we went last time we were wondering where do we go from here