If you're so confident then how about this.

If George Williams signs for Wire before 1st Jan 2018 I'll donate £50 to your nominated charity.
If George Williams doesn't sign for Wire before 1st Jan 2018 you donate £50 to Joining Jack.

I'll post this on the Wigan board as well so that you don't miss it.

'"

£50 ... The last of the big spenders. I didn't know things were that bad up north.
If I was a betting man I would have made it £500.

I'm not a betting man (I'm a poor pensioner

) , but I thought this was worth it for charity, particularly Joining Jack.

Ha ha. Good job nobody challenged you £50 to explain why Chris Bridge should have been sent off. Could also challenged you about saying Warrington would go bust on the back of image rights tax ruling or Warrington not being in a position to compete for at least five years because our team was so old with Morley, Monaghan etc.

At the end of the day Rubber Duck posts on here plenty of rumours he hears and to be fair he has a strike rate a lot better than a broken clock. Whether the Brown signing not happening and Williams signing ahead of November 2017 pre-season was his finest moment is very debatable.

You can be pretty sure that Warrington's interest in Williams will have forced the strained finances at the Dave Whelan Stadium to stretch that little bit more than they wanted to.

That's my post of the year by some margin.

Williams leaving Wigan may or may not happen. It certainly won't happen before the end of this coming season.

However, what is certain and undeniable is that Wigan can only have one marquee player and that, at present is NOT Williams. So it IS likely that he will be off somewhere else for 2018 - whether this is Warrington or Leeds or whoever is irrelevant.

And it is this likelihood that makes Wigan fans nervous and defensive. And we would be just the same if it was Currie or similar.

So maybe we can give all the betting talk a rest now.

That's right. It's a failure as we failed to achieve the objective which was to win it. Quite simple really. I saw on one of the Warrington facebook posts that some chap thought this was a "brilliant" season. I think Leeds' 2015 could be described as that, not Wires' 2016.

However, I have not forgotten the past where we would have only dreamt of Wire competing at the level they are currently. We have become a member of the big 4.

Didn't realise our history only went back 20 years!



If we are only focussing on the SJM days then every year has been an outright failure by your definition.....
That's OTT in my view.

We need to win the GF - that's clear, but I think every top side probably has the same or very similar goal.
This year our side was arguably the strongest in the league given the injuries. (Maybe Hull could claim that).
We blew the GF but getting to 2 finals and winning the LLS is not - for me - outright failure.

It's not a failure but to hit only one of the objectives and probably 3Rd choice one at that it's hardly a successful season either.

I'd say it's a season where we arguably underachieved given the side we had. And a team who ground out wins under the adversity of injured players going into most games with 3/4 first team players missing won the grand final!! Not sure if people knew bout the Wigan injuries!!

I hope brown can be that somthing that we lack in tight games where we need an edge in the last 10m area. Not sure I see where the contract length puts the Williams signing for 2018 now tho and where this puts Patton for 2018/9

I think Wigan's method of grinding out wins last season was just that ,a way of winning while pulling the wool over the eyes of opposing teams. They soon found an effective plan B for the play offs & final ,when it was needed.

As for the Wire & silverware ,it is very nice to win a trophy or two, but if the team can entertain me for 30+ games a season i am more than happy.

I think that anyone who comes on here and says last season was a failure is just trying to be argumentative, anyone with any brain cells knows that in a 12 team comp to finish top after 27 games and reach 2 finals is a dam good season. I understand everyone including me wants see wire win the GF, but they are 1 off games and you can not criticise recruitment or coaching ability or player development from 1 match. If Currie stretches over, if Atkins gathers the ball round his ankles, we win the Treble. To be 2 incidents away means we were very close and by far the best team in the league.

You are Tony Smith, and I claim my £5
You cannot criticise recruitment from 1 match. We're not. The season has done that for us. Likewise coaching ability.

We've proved we don't have the gumption or nous, to close big games out, when it matters. This has been evident for 4 years.

We'll NEVER have a better opportunity to win the GF, and we blew it. Take off your P&B tinted glasses, and get up from your Tony Smith duvet, and realise WE LOVED UP, and he's responsible.

Never mind, we go again in February. Same old Wire.

It wasn't a failure, however I consider it extremely disappointing.
I expected far more.

All of this.

This season was it. That was 'our year' and we came out in the second half and not one member of our pack wanted to run a ball in with intent. The amount of breaks Wigan made through our edge defence was extremely disturbing.

I agree with you marshman, if we don't win the GF then the season can't be classed as a success brigade are way off the mark IMO. We could have won the GF but on balance didn't deserve it ON THE DAY I would suggest that the opposite was true regarding the CC.

We seem to have drifted from the halfback solution thread title but my problem with TS is limited to succession planning three or four years ago not now and we should be looking forward to next year based on the improvement we had last year on the season before

Rubbish! The lack of front line props (due to injury) meant that Sims and particularly Hill had played far too many minutes by the end of the season and that's not to mention the second row injuries. I was surprised we got past Saints given the state of our forwards.

I think that is why i found the Dodds signing so strange. Ben Harrison needed 12 months tlc & we sign an injured Aussie & an injured Ryan Bailey.

But Dodds injury that kept him out for the season was unrelated to the initial problem so hardly foreseeable. Then there was the option of Ben W but that was kiboshed as well. I was vocal on the signing of Bailey I said he was a bad egg and it reflected badly on our club.
The way I see it is the club have tried to be creative in signings at the lower level to manage the cap, if they come off its a Brucie Bonus. I don't expect anyone thought we would have to rely on Bailey/Cox as much as we did.

To some this irrelevant because our forwards didn't perform for 40 mins in a major final our recruitment, coaching, investment in youth, choice of tea bags in the canteen is all wrong and a broom should sweep through the whole club.

Dodds' injury knackered up his pre season, and he missed the first couple of months of the season, as well as ben harrison, there was also the injuries to laithwaite and Bevans, which in particular seemed to take forever to get sorted, cox and bailey were supposed stop gaps for the first part of the season, unfortunately two of these never ever cleared up, and as said we ended up relying on them a lot more than was expected.

Didn't we sign Dodd's injured and recovering from a long lay off in Aus?

To be fair, Wigan had a lot of injuries and won the GF pot through a mixture of squad strength, coaching, and a will to win.

I think pretty much [ievery[/i team had lots of injuries last year, that's my belief as to why the quality seemed lower than previous years. Credit to Wigan, they managed a terrible situation very well and came out as the GF winners, but we weren't that far off. We did look knackered in the final, a lot more so than in the previous games, I think we'd reached our limit by then (and we didn't exactly have a massive bench to rotate with, did we); we didn't have the attacking spark we needed but we still nearly won (or at least nearly drew level with Atkins' try) and we also kept Wigan to 12 points so we can't have been doing that badly... With a bit of luck we could have won everything, and while that doesn't mean we can't find criticism, I do think people are overreacting at times

This was my agenda most of the season.

I kept blarting on how Hull FC won't make the GF of finish top.
Hull were the only team not to be smashed by injuries. They went almost all season with the same team and yet couldn't pull clear of Wire Pies and even Saints came back at us all.

I called it that they would not win the LLS or make the GF. I got some stick from the Hull fans sayin I was disrespectful...no I wasn't, it wasn't a pure ruddy guess. "It logical Jim"! Yes well done Hull, it was a bigger achievement for the club as a whole, it'll not be repeated next season. 5th spot at best.

IMO, last season was the worst SL standard across the board and the easiest SL to win. That is why even with making the finals, I call it the most disappointing season I've seen under TS, probably ever.

There have been many a season we've been exactly where we were at (deserved) and a two or five where we've over achieved....but never can I remember a season where we so much utterly under achieved. So much as it was easier to won the CC than it was to loose it!

The reason was mainly the busted and fringe weak pack, strangely a halfback, who I won't name, managing to win us games against the odds, and when our pack was in better shape, we won tough games without him.

...leading me back on topic!
We do need a quality half, the last leaver proves as much, but that pack being the best is more important.

Last year's pack was a quality forward off a clean sweep in the dullest season it was.

[climes down off soap box