Probably a sign of the playing side of things looking pretty good in the short and long term but it was all quite tame I thought. Lots of questions about ticket prices, seating arrangements, club sweatshirts etc.

The most interesting bit was the guy off super League pod getting Lenagans back up by asking if the money from the sale of Orrell will go back in to the club. A perfectly valid question I thought. Lenagan isn’t happy with some keyboard warriors (his words) on here making reference to him having short arms and long pockets.

I thought it was more a dig at those who have suggested he pockets the money himself (the short arms, deep pockets quip he made was in response to people who say we dont spe d up to salary cap and he confirmed we spend 25/30% over it due to dispensations).

There are people out there who keep suggesting jes pocketing money for himself.
7million quid put in suggests he doesn't.

Plenty of morons about

Yip
And people need to realise it.

Best thing for me overall was regarding his commitment moving forward to the club.
Seemed like he had a lot of fight in him and didn't sound like someone who had given up.

Fully agree. There’s certainly no money in rugby league even if he did fancy pocketing some. He sounds committed to the club and comments suggested his sons will take it on in the longer term. The next tv deal sounds hugely important for the whole sport.

Glad to hear that he's confirmed his commitment. I just hope he realises that the few vocal idiots who say such things are not representative of the vast majority of real fans. Anybody suggesting anyone with any business savvy, as IL clearly has, would go into Rugby league for financial benefit is a moron, plain and simple (pun intended).

In light of this obvious fact, a new whip will doubtless soon be found with which to beat the guy.

The IL decriers have all gone quiet in recent weeks because we've been winning. For example, I've not heard the juvenile phrase 'happy clapper' in quite a while.

But if - as I fear and suspect - we fail to win the Grand Final this year, they will be back straight away.

No doubt they will be. Regardless of the fact its extremely difficult to win 'back-to-back' titles. So much so only a small handful of clubs have ever done it.

Something we've not managed since the mid-nineties. Just to be in with a good chance is a credit to the players and coach this season.

Correct. Not that anybody wouldn’t be disappointed not to win the Grand Final but I’ve said before everything now just feels like a bonus when you consider where we were sat in May/June time. We’ve been on a great run and you just never know what could happen these next few weeks but regardless we’ve got positives to take out of the season and non more so then the three young forwards who’ve burst through and made spots their own.

Was anything said about the Shaun Edwards fiasco and the very misleading statement put out by the club to coincide with ST sales for this season?

Same info that’s been in the press. Lenagan said he’s always done things on handshakes and said it was an embarrassing situation for everyone involved. He reiterated that Edwards reasons were that he felt worried he wouldn’t be good enough to do the job after attending lots of training sessions and being hugely impressed with the standards. People will believe what they want and I understand the reasons why we’d role those lines out but I don’t buy it.

Edwards himself as much as said the same thing himself recently. I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next man but maybe the truth is the simple version. Tbh I never bought the noises regarding the contract no-show coming out of the Edwards camp at the time. That he simply got cold feet seems a whole lot more plausible to me given he'd been out of the game so long.

Just think it comes down to money and bigger offers elsewhere. I think he probably used us to get a deal in Union but it’s done and we move on.

I think his stock is high in union and he really didn’t need the Wigan job to raise it looking back I think he just got caught up in it all and when cold,hard reality came knocking at the door he just got cold feet,rightly too as I think he would have been a disaster certainly in the short term.

I hold no malice to him really and hope he does a good job with France RU side in the coming years

I didn’t agree with the arrangement in the first place and can’t say I was too sad to see it fall through but I’m not convinced at all that Edwards backed away from that deal doubting his ability. The guy has self belief and confidence in bucket loads and it doesn’t stack up for me but I’m not overly fussed with the reasons. Lam has a rolling contract now according to Lenagan last night and May it may not stay longer than next season.

Posted a report on the other forum. Quite long and can't be bothered to repeat myself so check it out if interested.

Cheers pal. Some positive stuff about future revenue opportunities and financial forecasts. I do wonder what cuts they've made to go from a £1.4 million loss to a projected loss of £300k for this year. Particularly given the marquee signings.

The marquee signings will probably be in the next set of figures after those I guess.

One thing I don’t think has been said enough about these losses is that as much as it’s something we should all be thankful for that Lenagan is prepared to cover them, he also holds responsibility for them in the first place. He runs the business (along with support of his staff) and that business is running at a huge loss and whilst some of the reasons are out of his control (Sky scheduling for example), that’s not the case for everything (Australia games, marketing, recruitment).

I think from listening to him the other night, they’ve made some tough decisions to arrest the crowd slide. He says they wanted to go in a different direction from Wane and play a more attacking brand of rugby (Wanes choice to go but they were comfortable with it due to wanting change)and they’ve backed Lam to the hilt with the players to make that happen. They’ve looked at season ticket pricing and now it’s up to the people to back it.

They need to continually push season ticket sales. Give updates as to how many are sold or set targets. It really creates a buzz when they announce they’ve reached XXX ticket sales. I remember a few years ago when we broke the 10k season tickets, I’m pretty sure the marketing and regular updates given really helped to achieve that target.

My only issue with the current arrangement is that there is no stability beyond 2020. It may be all change again. Whether you agreed with the Edwards appointment or not one thing it did offer next season was stability for X amount of years. I accept however that it’s quite possible and feasible to say without confirmation that Edwards wasn’t coming and Lam was staying on, that we wouldn’t be within 80mins of, what was in the not too distant past, an unlikely GF appearance.

The indications the other night were that Lam will probably go after another year but it’s not set in stone and he’s on a rolling deal. I think there may well be continuity in some form by appointing from within. They noted when the Lam one year deal was announced that they felt Winder wasn’t quite ready. It’s feasible that in another years time they may think he is.

I was intrigued by the comments he made about tapping up George Burgess whilst on the Australia trip. He said we spent a lot of time with the Burgess brothers whilst we were there. The trip may not have been as financially successful as we’d hoped but it had other benefits. He even said ‘who knows, maybe there’ll be another Burgess brother here after next season’. Sam anybody?

I forgot about that comment. I wasn’t sure if he meant here as in Wigan or super league but I can see Sam Burgess following the likes of George and Widdop and coming over here to finish his career. His run ins with the NRL disciplinary seem to be getting him down and they’d go easy on him over here given his status (like they did with Morley).

Sam would demand a marquee spot. He’s no spring chicken either, nearly 31 and when our next marquee spot becomes free (on the presumption Hastings goes back to the NRL) he’ll be 33.

I’m not saying don’t sign Sam, I’d love nothing more than to have him at the club. I do advise caution though; would he be value for money at 33? My heart says YES but my mind isn’t sure.

Without knowing his future form and size of contract it’s futile to attempt to arrive at a decision re vfm.