All 3 would just be average players in the NRL. They may not even make the 1st team, just like French. The NRL is full of outstanding players. Just take a look at Reece Walsh at Brisbane Broncos. What a player he is and he's keeping another excellent player, Tristan Sailor, out of the team when he comes back from injury.

French is probably the best back in SL, but he would just be average in the NRL. The NRL is a far better product, unfortunately.

So 25 year old 11 game Sailor is excellent….but French would be average. Where is the logic in that?

Sailor looks a great prospect, but as you say, only a handful of games. French would improve plenty (but not all) of NRL teams IMO.

Fortunately, this is all now strictly academic!

It’s a great league but they blow enough smoke up own their backsides without us joining in. French would be a good player back in the NRL just as Smithies has taken to it comfortably, Pearce Paul has etc. Even Aidan Sezer is having a great time of it back there at the minute. Guys like Ipape and Amone would do a good job as well.

They have more very good players than we do and clearly more World Class players but the best in this competition have consistently shown that it isn’t a league full of super humans and we shouldn’t sell our league so short. The pundits over there do enough of that, talking as though KPP has come from playing in a pub league.

Couldn’t have put this better myself, I was about to mention Sezer too who was shocking here.

They are loving KPP and Smithies there already.

It’s a great comp but there’s a load of bang average players playing week in week out.

Some of their games looked in slow motion compared to Wigan Saints.

The thing that bugged me with them talking about KPP on one of the review shows, was how surprised they were after his debut that he could cope that well with the physicality and pace of the game. They made it sound like a Superleague commentator would talk about a guy stepping up from League one here. Now he might not have been playing games against Saints every week but KPP had just come off an English Grand Final and is used to playing in big games.

The step up is over egged and I’m surprised after over a decade of English players going there and thriving, they’ve not realised that these lads might actually be able to play and might just be in good nick, without needing to be spoon fed.

The NRL is streets ahead of us.

They might blow smoke up players, but at least a few of them deserve it & they pick the right ones. SL, or Sky will laud over guys like Sneyd & McShane, telling us how great they are and how wonderful Salford, Cas etc are. All whilst guys like Wardle or Smithies last year hardly get mentioned. It's laughable.

I think a good few clubs in the NRL would love someone of Sneyd’s ability.

They are desperately short on quality play makers hence the reason Wigan and Saints are being so protective of theirs.

Someone like Sneyd walks into a team like Souths at the moment.

I’m not saying the league is not superior but they are lacking depth of years gone by in certain positions such as halves, 5/8ths and 9s, yet their strength in fullbacks in particular is ridiculous.

Athleticism has replaced guile in a lot of cases which has seen the likes of Sezer go back and nail a starting spot.

I don’t think anyone would deny it is but there is sometimes a narrative that goes around in this country that it’s 17 supermen per side going at it each week and it’s just not the case. Dozens of Superleague players would get games in the NRL and some would go extremely well.

It's utter garbage anyway. French wouldn't be average anywhere. He has too much natural ability and x factor for that. Was he average against the NRL's reigning premiers the other week? I think a MOM performance would suggest otherwise.

Some players can just do things others can't so will always stand out.

French took a 4 year deal because he would probably only get a 1 or 2 NRL deal.
Good economic sense but to really test yourself you need to play in the NRL. Watch a couple of NRL games and then watch a SL game. SL is like slow motion.

Apart from a few games, like Saints v Wiggin or the play-offs, SL isn't at the same intensity on a weekly basis. You only have to ask how many current SL players would walk into a NRL team. Not many. How many current NRL players would walk into a SL team. Quite a lot.

Smithies and Pearce-Paul.

And you could add Thompson & Leeming who were both regulars last season and French and Smith who both had offers and that's just from Wigan!

Will ask again, how can you in the same post label 11 gone Sailor excellent….but then say French would be average in the same post.

Just trying to understand your logic there.

I think Bevan French would improve most, not all, but NRL sides. As I never cease to gleefully explain to posters on Aussie sites, he is a much better and complete player than the guy who left Parramatta. And of course I'm delighted he's playing for Wigan.

That’s something that gets ignored. Guys like French, Field, Amone, Lam etc aren’t the same guys that left the NRL. They’ve now had regular first team rugby, have more experience and are better and more confident players.

It appears some of the knuckle draggers on other sport forums think that these contracts are being funded by the Latics.

Are we just going to completely ignore the 47 NRL games that French played in then where he scored 35 tries? And it was said at the time that the reason for him being dropped was a dosagreement with the coaching staff on what was his position.

He is definitely a better player now also than the one that joined from Parra, and in the last year he has seen massive improvements to the area of his game that was regarded as his weakness, which is his defence.

i'll disagree re Sneyd

he hasnt had a gig at a top club over here (Salford, Cas and Hull), and there must be a reason why. I'll admit on his day he can play (or kick), but i just dont think he is consistent enough within a game, let alone over the course of a season, hence why he's never gone to Wigan, Saints, Leeds etc

Yeah, they're being paid for by the minus £17.4m Latics made last year. The football club could have covered the rugby clubs full salary cap as part of that and they'd have still lost £15m or so.

Over the last couple of decades, some of them - and not just a few - have come to define their very existence as sports fans by the firm conviction (aka epic self-delusion) that Wigan RL only exist through the grace and favour of Wigan Athletic, and that at some in the near future the plug will be pulled. Why does no one else realise that we are entirely funded by a football club (who's previous owner didn't even know what RL was)? Why doesn't the rest of the sports world get it that the fact we don't own our own ground will at some point see us cast out (I guess the acquisition of the DW by Mike Danson, our new owner, slipped past them).

It's quite funny to watch embittered little fools make even bigger fools of themselves with posts like these. But there's some sadness there too. It betrays a flawed but deeply embedded mindset which holds that an RL club can't have the wherewithal and integrity to achieve the things Wigan have without some mysterious outside assistance.

There was a genuine hope out there that when David Whelan commenced his well-funded football experiment in Wigan, the RL club, which had dominated the local sports scene for a century, would simply fold. I suppose I can understand certain quarters' disappointment when that didn't happen, but it's now taken on genuinely surreal dimensions. After IL stepped down, a Saints-supporting friend of mine rang up to ask if it was true that Wigan Athletic had finally bought out Wigan Warriors.

Yes, really.

The story doing the rounds outside Wigan was so far from what had actually happened (Latics hanging by a thread, not having a pot to p### in etc), that I was too flummoxed to give him a coherent answer. And even now, it seems, it's going on. If nothing else, though, at least we're all used to it.

We almost see a microcosm of that here at Wigan now and again. We produce far more players of SL quality than can realistically get into our team. Some of them aged 27-28 look the real deal after being let go in their early 20s, but that's only after they've played 150 games at a Salford or a Huddersfield.

So that's 6 players so far. You may add another 10 from other clubs and that would be it. There would be a hell of a lot more NRL players who would walk into SL teams. You can discount Hull, Cas and London and my team Leigh, at the moment, with the horrendous injury list. So there are only 8 teams fighting for a top 6 spot, and only 2 of them have a chance of winning the GF or playing at the same intensity as the NRL - Saints and Wiggin.

The NRL have 17 teams who play at that intensity every week.

I can't see other SL teams catching up to Saints and Wiggin to be honest. And with IMG removing relegation some teams are happy to tick their finance and social media boxes rather than build a team strong enough to compete.

No they don't.

They clearly have a better comp with more good players and teams but to suggest that every team plays at the intensity of the recent derby is complete nonsense. There are several teams struggling over there currently. Knights beat the Dragons comfortably today.

None of that matters anyway. Your assertion that French would be average over there has nothing to do with the intensity of the competition. His try scoring record in that comp as a much lesser player was excellent. He's twice the player now. There are relatively few players in world rugby capable of the things French finds second nature. Just like Robinson etc. before him. Those type of players flourish wherever they ply their trade.

People will fall off their chairs that you think more NRL players would walk in to Superleague clubs than the other way round! State the obvious why don't you.

Nobody is disputing it's a better league but simply pointing out that you're wrong that good players here would go to the NRL and just be average Joe's. Loads of lads have gone from over here to the NRL and excelled. I've seen bits of 3 NRL games yesterday and today and I've not seen a team yet that I think would run over the top of this current Wigan side and I've seen plenty of average players on show (I've also seen loads of World Class players as well).