And how do you propose to measure that?

How do you propose to measure the benefit of this "reinvestment"?

Pretty easy with a big name transfer in when the points are being scored. A lot harder in your "what if" scenarios.


To answer your point, this funding should come from the "day to day" income of the club, or if the chairman is willing to subsidise the club (and there is an argument that as the biggest RL club in the world, this should apply to Wigan), out of his/her pocket.

You missed out Dr Who. (and Doolitle)

Not sure what exactly it entails but we had a partnership with South Wales Scorpions and with the Wales RL national body to help develop Scorpions and the Welsh game in general before all the changes to DR came in for this season. That is still continuing. So we provide support staff as well as DR players for the Scorpions. Their head coach (can't remember his name) is one of the Wigan staff too and took that role when the partnership began. Andy Coley's job with Wigan is connected with the Welsh partnership too IIRC.

When? Didn't he put a load of the Joel Tomkins transfer fee into that Central Park place?

He may have done or used it to fund the transfers of Matty Smith, Blake Green and Scott Taylor. The accounts don't show the actual breakdown of transfers to investment in the likes of Central Park and Wigan t.v.

Because of these investments it was planned to make a loss in the 2012 season hoping that the investments would bear fruit in the coming years.

It's called long term planning , something that some on here seem to have difficulty in understanding.

I guess we'll find out in the years to come.

BS

You cannot quantify or measure things like that so it's an easy throwaway comment.

Still waiting on your measure to ensure we get the "best return" btw. Should be interesting.

Nowadays everybody wanna' talk,
Like they got somethin' to say,
But when they move their lips,
It's just a bunch of jibberish,
Futhermuckers act like they forgot about Dre!

Dr Fox

Of course we can measure "things"
Success on the field and just as importantly success of it.

IL has turned a business round that was winning nothing and losing money year in year out.
Is that not a measure of success?

Or have we just been lucky?
Do you not think he had a five year plan when he took over the club?

And that plan involved selling Sam and investing in "development" did it? Give over!

You still haven't answered the question. How exactly do you intend to measure the relative benefits to ensure the "best" achieved.

You cannot. It was a nothing comment, just like "the money has gone into development"

Anyway back on topic (remember that?)

I think this could be a good appointment - I remember James playing for Wigan (in a very poor team) and he always looked like he was giving 100% unlike some.
I wonder if he is going to SWS as a kind of learning experience with a longer term position back at Wigan. Even if not he could do a more than useful job down at SWS which could have longer term benefits for Wigan.

Quincy is a pathologist so think of your favourite past player he can resurrect.
McCoy is light years away
Dr Who is a time traveller
Jekyll is a chemist *cough cough* Hock * cough*
Dr Evil is recovering from eating bad beef in Preston
Dr Watson is a private detective you could use him to find Tomkins when he plays Wire.
Dr Octopus is a physicist specialising in unlimited energy resources, you already have O'loughlin so no need for him
Dr Hillary is a southerner.
Kildare is a conscientious objector so not ready for the fight
Which only leaves Dr Quin medicine woman and if that is still Jane Seymour then you need the combination to my underground dungeon before I'll let her out

We produce far more Super League-level players than we can use, and more NRL-level players than we can keep hold of long term. I'd be amazed if selling some of these players, and using some of the revenue to fund scouting, training facilities, coaches etc didn't form part of Leneghan's business structure. With Sam it is a choice between:

- keeping an NRL level player for 7 seasons, 2 of which he'll spend sulking, then letting him go for nothing and definitely never getting him back further down the line
- keeping an NRL level player for 5 seasons, getting a massive fee for him which we can invest in various avenues, then probably getting 3 seasons out of him at the end of his career, or longer if things don't work out in the NRL.

I'd take the second choice.

The only players we sell are those we should be keeping. The vast majority of the numerous others found in other SL sides are there after being released as surplus to requirements or left at the end of their contracts for free (like Tuson will).

This should be enough to show you the idea we are selling Mossop and Sam to fund development is either complete nonsense or a completely idiotic policy. We sell top players so we can train others so weakening the team and have no guarantee we can produce replacements is what the latter amounts to. Bonkers.

I can't believe you are taking Rouges suggestion seriously. It' just his way of living up to his chairmanship of the Happy Clapper club by finding yet another obtuse way to make a silk purse out of sows ear.

Will you stop pointing out how embarassing this point of view is please? At least let them dig themselves further into a hole before you do.



Absolute drivel being posted on the subject by some.

Too right!!

There's a middle ground, though. While I agree that, in an ideal world, we should be keeping all our top players, circumstances make that very difficult: the salary cap, the Aussie exchange rate, the allure of the game down under, the increased money and fame in RU, the guarantee of 1st team rugby, etc.

If we accept that we are going to lose players, it then makes sense to get some compensation for them, so the main debate is whether it's better value to pay large transfer fees for their replacements, or to increase our ability to produce them ourselves. Those large transfer fees, historically, have always proved to be a gamble, with at least as many failures as successes - and presupposes that such top-class replacements are even available; we're not going to get Slater or Inglis (for example) no matter how much cash we throw out there. On the other hand, our (relatively) recent investment in facilities, scouting, coaching staff etc have given us by far the best production line in SL.

We don't need London to go under to do this.

That only makes sense if they weren't going to leave anyway. Where do you expect top class replacements to come from if we don't develop them?

With the strength of the aussie dollar and the NRL salary cap we can't bring in a Barrett or a Lyon, and the best players in Super League are already at clubs of a similar level, and more often than not looking to go to the NRL. To keep two players who will put in half hearted performances for a couple of extra years rather than selling them then maybe getting them back later in their careers just doesn't make sense to me. Also, if Wire, Leeds and Huddersfield don't take the same stance, I can see top players going there rather than here, knowing that if they perform there they can bag themselves an NRL contract, rather than here where you'll be forced to see out your contract.

You and Brett Kenny seem to spend a lot of time whinging about this on various threads, but I've yet to see either of you post what you would do differently. Can you let me know how you would handle Mossop and Tomkins, how you would replace them when they leave, and how you would keep players like Hampshire, Tierney and Crosby on board who will be looking for first 17 shirts in the next 2/3 years

Well I tried...................................

I think you are quite probably right, and thats what you do in a business, invest for the future.

Yea, what we need is: Dr Feelgood

Or the Brian Noble classic, "we need to put humpty dumpty back together again"

The Scorpions' results this season have been very poor. I appreciate that it's about developing players, not results, but I did expect that they would do better as we have had several players involved down there. Are the players moving forward playing at this level?

The Scorpions probably made a rod for their own back when they overachieved and made the playoffs in their debut season a couple of years back. They struggled last year (2nd bottom IIRC) as well as this year so were never going to threaten the top teams in Championship 1 and going into the last match still have a chance of making the playoffs, so not a disastrous year for them. As a club they seem to be playing the long game and looking to keep on existing rather than shooting for instant glory. The partnership should hopefully help with that. As far as our players turning out for them goes, the majority seem to have been lads who needed a bigger test than the under 19s gives but are not yet ready for the top end of the championship with Leigh (mainly due to their age). Playing in a team that is battling for every point will have served them better in the long run than being part of an under 19s team with whom very few teams in their competition can compete.