the lad youre thinking of is Ian Ramsdale who's from the North west and has a great relationship with Quins and football permitting has a 1 hour LONDON RL prog on BBC London every wednesday night at 9pm

Phil,
You did a god job last night trying to keep the show on track, but it did sound as though IL and yourself were getting a bit miffed at times.

Miffed - no definitely not - confused perhaps with Jacko going off on his moon madness - magnetohydrodynamics whatever it is- Ian was very impressive , spoke with knowledge and a passion for the club

My personal view is that the media coverage of Wigan at the start of this season has been very poor, and much of the time prejudiced. Eddie and Stevo's pro-Mick Higham rants have been embarrassing. Other players have swapped clubs, but only this one is apparently of interest to them. Eddie's tiny, ice-cold eyes seem to shrink even more when he's talking about Wigan.

Other media types - Hunt and Dearden being good examples, Andy Wilson being another - repeat and repeat the one-eyed drivel about Wigan recruiting overseas talent at the expense of youth, barely stopping to acknowledge that, with nine ex-Academy players in the current first team squad, we again have more home-grown players than almost anyone else. I rarely hear the likes of Warrington, Wakey, Hudds, Cas etc being chastised for their failure to develop as many youngsters as we do.

Some people - if they had half a shred of intellect - would congratulate Wigan for fuelling the SL with young talent, rather than adopting the ridiculously unrealistic view that all these kids should now be playing for Wigan and that it's somehow immoral that they're not. Even if we'd kept them all, we've produced so many that we couldn't field them all at the same time.

It doesn't surprise me in the least that Ian Lenagan is finally getting miffed.

Spot on

Remember one season on boots an all when eddie was on his little rant about us letting young talent leave..Clarke stopped him mid speach and said exactly the same.Wigan should be praised for the the talent they bring into SL

Agreed. I find Andy Wilson particularly irritating. Being the RL journalist for The Guardian means he only gets about 200 words a week - so how does he use them? About four weeks ago, he wrote a story about Wigan must envy the "homegrown" talent on display at St Helens?

I dont think they have made it! Yet

Yeah. That was a 'choke on your breakfast' moment, that was.

I don't know what it is, but I can only assume that a lot of these journos are typical 'small men in small job' type characters. They've never managed to throw off their old club preferences because they don't actually realise that's something they're supposed to do. But then, in that respect, I suppose they're pretty representative of nearly everyone else employed in RL.

I suspect IL and co feel they should rise above this sort of stuff, and be more professional. But the question I ask is how much biased crap can you endure from the supposed neutrals before you snap back? It's not as if being professional worries a lof these guys. Eddie Hemming's famous comment "So can Leeds beat Wigan this weekend," and Stevo responding with something like "let's hope so", springs to mind. Eddie simmering with rage on the night Maurice quite rightly won round one of the points-deduction tribunal is another. With the Muppet Show on Sky, I suspect it still boils down to that incident all those years ago when they weren't invited to a testimonial golf day that Andy Farrell had either organised or was to be the beneficiary of. They were shallow enough to raise the subject on TV. A true nadir even among their pathetic moments.

I suspect IL quite enjoyed putting them int heir place regarding the youth development at Wigan (see page 1 of this thread)

It was very pleasing to hear IL put the Wigan point of view so passionately and eloquently.

He certainly wasn't taking any cr@p from Jack and Trevor

The thing is its easier to put kids in when your already a top side. Wigan did it all the time mid 90s. Craig Murdock, Danny Ellison, Rob Smyth to name but 3 scored tries for fun in a quality team but their careers came to nothing once they left Wigan.

Stephen Holgate another. What happened to him? Probably the most non remembered Grand Final winner ever but he started for Wigan in 1998 v Leeds.

The true test for saints "homegrown" talent will be when Cunningham, Long and Wellens are no longer around. Bit shoes to fill - more mentally than physically.

Again, this very sensible viewpoint is something the people we're talking about would lack the brain capacity to understood.

can anyone help me out in getting the iplayer to work for this show, i've followed the link from here, got a message saying i had to install real player, so i did, and now when i click the links from this topic, i still get the message to download real player, even though it is already installed.

Firstly restart your web browser. If that doesn't work, restart you PC. If that doesn't work re-install real player and hopefully that will sort it.

And if all this doesn't work, get a mac.

Jack and Trev dont need me to leap me to their defence and i would admit to having an "interest" in the programme but
im not sure it was as " confrontational" as you seem to think- Ian gave a very good and informed view of the clubs Youth and Scholarship system- i found it very informative -

i do think its relevant that all the clubs who at this moment have a lot of " home grown talent" in their first team squads and theres not many are flagged up - its nice to see some getting to work on this and a real positive - it doesnt need to be a numbers game of theyve got more than you have etc etc, -

I know that Wigan copped some flak on Day 1 of the season when so many people weighed in on the composition of the starting 13 against Wakefield but since then things have changed and i think Ian underlined that very well - i honestly thought it was a healthy debate with relevant questions asked and answered thoroughly .

wouldn't mind one of them if you have a spare



got it working now though, restart was required

Thanks for the link. I'm listening now and Lenaghan is very articulate and is a stark contrast to Bert and Ernie.
Overall a very good and informative interview. Neither he or Mick Hogan duck a single question.

Two of which are homegrown anyway.

Well obviously..

Lenagan seems to rate McDermott as a good coach

Quote ="Bilko"Seems to be doing Quins away games as well for BBC London. Gets about a bit. For me I've nothing against Dearden or Trevor Hunt but you do get tired of the same voices every week. BBC Leeds at least freshen it up every week with a proper studio pundit for the phone in. Being a person who listens the match despite being there, I still don't get why they can't find a proper ex Wigan pundit. Kris Rads perhaps, heard him doing a game for BBC National Radio last year and he sounded good. I don't wanna hear Neil Turley during our commentaries. Biased as hell and played most of his career at a lower level. Generally though we get a good service from BBC Manchester. 2 Hour Thursday show now and (unless football interrupts) they'll normally prioritise with full commentary on Wigan ahead of any other side. Incidentally commentary on both Latics and Man City games on Sunday so best to find rugby league online Links: wigan.rlfans.com/fusion_pages/in ... page_id=55 icon_cool.gif'" you serious? every week it's the same thing with different voices...the presenter reading out texts from fans of one club slagging of their local rivals or saying as he chuckles " I can't read this but...."

Quote ="Bilko"Seems to be doing Quins away games as well for BBC London. Gets about a bit. For me I've nothing against Dearden or Trevor Hunt but you do get tired of the same voices every week. BBC Leeds at least freshen it up every week with a proper studio pundit for the phone in. Being a person who listens the match despite being there, I still don't get why they can't find a proper ex Wigan pundit. Kris Rads perhaps, heard him doing a game for BBC National Radio last year and he sounded good. I don't wanna hear Neil Turley during our commentaries. Biased as hell and played most of his career at a lower level. Generally though we get a good service from BBC Manchester. 2 Hour Thursday show now and (unless football interrupts) they'll normally prioritise with full commentary on Wigan ahead of any other side. Incidentally commentary on both Latics and Man City games on Sunday so best to find rugby league online Links: wigan.rlfans.com/fusion_pages/in ... page_id=55 icon_cool.gif'" you serious? every week it's the same thing with different voices...the presenter reading out texts from fans of one club slagging of their local rivals or saying as he chuckles " I can't read this but...."

Good to hear IL and MH on the show. I enjoyed listening to it, especially the fact that both IL and MH speak their mind and are not frightened to do so.

Finally got around to listening to it on Sunday. They both came across very well and answered the home grown player questions with conviction.

I thought one interesting comment was when asked about Noble's position was that you don't sack a coach for losing three matches (or words to that effect) but IL then went on to say losing 6 or 9 in a row was a different matter. Perhaps Noble doesn't have a guaranteed job for the season if things go belly up!

Dave

I think it would be difficult for any club with aspirations to stick with a coach who loses 9 in a row. By this, I'm not implying that IL and MH are no different from anyone else, just that ... I guess we all have our cut-off point. Even if IL is inclined to be more patient with a coach than someone like Whelan would be, he can't be infinitely patient.

For me, Wigan have sufficient good players to make a decent fist of SL. I don't think they're good enough to win it (unless they hit spanking form at just the right time), but they definitely should be up there challenging. As we've said in the past, they'vd frequently been unconvincing under Noble; quite often the weaknesses on the field are the sort that even a layman like me would expect top-level coaching to correct.

For these reasons, I still suspect that - even if we have an indifferent season rather than an out-an-out poor one - I wouldn't be surprised if IL and co started looking further afield.

Have only just listened to this.

I normally defend Jack & Trev but jesus that first 20 minutes was embarrasing.