lol

It's only natural though for people who have seen a player, to pass on their opinion.

More often than not the "public" get it wrong.

e.g. I remember when Eamon O'Carroll and Paul Prescott were coming onto the scene.

O'Carroll was often favoured on here, but the coaches obviously knew otherwise. The rest is history.

We will always be at a disadvantage to the coaches in terms of viewing the player, understanding strengths and weaknesses and their ability to fit into the system.

To the supporter it's means nothing. To the Chairman it's money in his pocket.

But let's wait until the news is confirmed before we levy the accusation.

I don't want Wigan to be the richest club in SL, I want them to be the most successful

I know its pretty bad for you being Aucklands feeder team as of now, but atleast us at Leigh have shed our 'Wigan B Team' tag, we're now 'Auckland C team'.

10/10.....

Yeah, they were both crocks!

I agree, there is always the chance it really is just a rumour but a lot of people are going to look at bit stupid if Sam doesn't leave for NZW at the end of the season and I don't mean supporters. Journalists mostly! It's a done deal according to the NZ papers.

No I must apologise I want a full teams of locals. The point I was trying to make is there are players getting hyped for by former players, Phil Clarke with his nephew and Jason Robinson with his son etc, some are good but Wigan cannot lose objectivity in selecting players, lets have a fair system and not have ex players fasttracking relatives to nice contracts at the expense of real talent. We all know this world is full of country clubs who trade in favors

Hi Wigan Warriors I'm a supporter of the NZ Warriors and in the 1980's a Wigan fan up until the advent of my team in 1995.

The negative sentiments about being associated with my club I've read here Mirrors a lot of the NZW fans experiences of our clubs dealings with Wigan in the past.

Let me say from the outset that this venture / proposed merging of clubs is an Idea I support 110 %

I'm more interested in the big picture and how far this idea could go for the betterment of both clubs than quibbling about who gets the short end of the stick when discussing individual players.

Sam Tomkins for example , while i understand the angst , guess what ? in our ignorance most NZW fans hadn't heard of him or at best know very little of the guy.

The moaning about signing an unproven ESL player for the money that's being bandied about on our forum just underscores the degree of ignorance.

Remember Henry Paul ? we swapped him for losing coach John Money , and well past it Forwards Dennis Betts and Andy Platt.

Both those lads struggled and between them they chewed up the larger part of our Salary Cap.

I digress I came here to make friends not troll .....but it pays to remember NZ has supplied Wigan with some pretty good players Versus what came here , I would say the Balance sheet is well and truly in your favor.

The NZW Jnrs system is the best in the NRL , if you don't see value in having some of the two time premiership winning NZW Jnrs in your system then you'll miss out on something special.

NRL scouts are represented by every club in NZ , that's right...these Juniors some here are underrating have full time salary Talent scouts from 15 Australian clubs attending all of the NZ Schools comps.

NZW is a one country club , as such the jnrs depth rivals anywhere in the world.

The Warriors were Grand finalist 2011

2012 ESL coach Brian Mclennan takes over and we've been struggling to undo the mess he left the club in since.

Owen Glen Billionaire Philanthropist bought the Warriors and has the resources to rape and pillage your club without so much as a sister club offer on the table.

It turns out Owen Glen is more interested in entering into a deal which will potentially put both Warriors Clubs at a distinct advantage to their opposition.

For starters we are not in competition with one another.

Secound of all the NZW after a clean out and investment in the very jnrs we're talking about have turned the most inexperienced NRL team to a four in a row winning streak over the best teams in this comp.....aside from a nightmare anomally versus Penrith the NZW have been within four points of beating the top sides of the NRL the entire season.

Watch this space......the Warriors have gone from $250 / 1 outsiders to $30/1 inside of a month and dished out the biggest hiding the Brisbane Broncos have suffered on their home ground in the history of that club.

The NZW are known as the sleeping giant of the NRL , we need your help / expertise to realise that potential.

Equally there is an insane amount of talent coming through , some of which will be available for the Wigan Warriors to use moving forward.

It might actually be a good thing for your club to gain several hundred thousand more fans and four million new followers from another part of the world

If we do end up seeing some premiership-winning NZW juniors in our playing system, I guess we'll be impressed, but forgive us for being skeptical if at present we don't see much sign of this.

Maybe it'll happen, maybe it won't.

You've never heard of Sam Tomkins before?

If you'd any idea how often that kind of sentiment has been expressed about our best players by pompous oafs involved with the NRL. I'm not saying you're a pompous oaf, but we've heard it time and again from people like Phil Gould, who use it purely as a means to mock the English game. It doesn't exactly win friendships (especially when there's a veiled threat that we'll be raped and pillaged if we don't fall into line - ooh, how scary).

And I don't think harping on about 'poor signings' in the distant past, as if we somehow owe you, will win you much sympathy either. Trust me, we'd much rather Denis Betts and Andy Platt had stayed here.

I'm actually ambivalent about this hook-up, not because I doubt what you say about NZW about to explode as a mega-force in the game, but because the tide of opinion is currently that Britain's best players must go to the NRL. We're all finding it a bit difficult to envisage any of your better juniors wanting, or even being allowed, to come here, even though we'd love it to happen.

I was just stirring the Pot,. thanks for the reply.....I absolutely agree that the NRL is full of Pompous Oafs and 'Gus' is one of the worst.

I didn't mean to give the impression that I hadn't heard of Sam....plenty of Kiwis haven't until these rumours started.

Ok so it wasn't till 2010 when I was was watching England V NZ Maori at Mt smart stadium that I saw one of the most talented footballers I've ever seen play live Rugby.

I've got that limitless video on my desk top and the guy is an absolute Freak.

I don't believe for a secound that he will have to adjust to the NRL , I think the NRL will have to adjust to Tomkins.

I was an Andy Platt / Betts fan before they came here and had an unfortunate run in a poorly run club with no history.

The rape and Pillage comment wasn't a intended as a threat....after reading the comments about the NZW suspicious intentions I thought that would give folk some perspective.

Here's some examples of where this Juniors program could work out.

Keven Locke and Glen Fisiahi are two very good Fullbacks from our Juniors programe , if Sam Tomkins comes here both players would walk into another NRL club tomorrow

Peta Hiku is last years Jnr Fullback....we obviously can't keep them all so Hiku is now Manly's starting Fullback and he's going well over there.

That's just one position from our program. Once they go to a competitor they are lost , that's why we want to link up with Wigan

Some of our Jnr's are absolute monsters.....Big boned Polynesian Lads who are running all over the top of their opposites......the production line is so long that many miss out on making the NRL side by the narrowest of margins to their team mates who do go on and get promoted.

What they lack is a exposure to a club culture like Wigans and exposure to a style of rugby that doesn't let them rely entirely on their Physical presence.

I suppose we'll just have to wait and see how this works out.

We're all resigned to the fact that Sam, our best player in many, many years, is leaving. Everyone is feeling very down about it, and frustrated, as we all thought he'd be here for at least another year.

The bigger picture is that the British game is under siege at present. Rugby Union in this country is obsessed with trying to sign RL players - and Wigan are picked on regularly as we have a production line of young talent. Now that the NRL is getting in on the act as well, it feels like our domestic game's best assets are being stripped away on a monthly basis. More importantly, there is no real leadership from the RFL, who can't seem to attract money into the British game with which we can fight back.

The problem is that, if we were to gain two or three very good young NZWs in exchange for Sam, even if only for a couple of years, that might soften the blow and make it look as this is actually a viable link-up - but there is no sign of that happening from this end. And if we can't get quality players in exchange for our best in a generation, how can we expect to do that for anyone else?

It's a bleak picture from our POV.

There is another problem with this and that is the stupid U19's rules. Unless any NZW player we get [iis[/i under 19 he's going to be sat on his backside not playing unless he is a first team regular.

It's the same problem Gellling has. As he is over 19 and as he is a Kiwi he can't go out on dual registration and so only plays if it's for the first team.

Which over-19 NZW player is going to come here on that basis unless they are guaranteed 1st team game time which would imply top players coming not prospects? Equally why would we actually be interested in taking any U19 players anyway? NZW may have a top junior set up but players of this age are still inexperienced.

Bottom line is over-19 players have to be good enough to get a regular 1st team slot and U19 players aren't much use to us in my opinion.

So if a tie up meant we got Kevin Locke coming this way with Sam going to the other that might look like an equal partnership but I doubt this is in the cards.

An interesting fact I have just seen in the NZ press is that Kris Radlinski is over there for 3 days on a fact finding mission.
Maybe he is there to tie up the loose ends prior to the big announcement, there is a photograph of Kris, Dean Bell and Jerry Seuseu taken at what I presume to be the NZ Warriors ground.

Did we not have one of these supposed partnership with Saracens and have we not been talking about an NRL partnership since IL bought the club. Are such partnerships a meaningless media tool to pacify disgruntled fans or are they actually productive?

I can see why you all are skeptics, there are lots of issues more complex than I realised at first.
What about our reserve grade players ? in positions where we have an excess of depth ?

Secound row for example / Prop .......there are young guys who will stroll into our first grade team tomorrow if Injury allows and they are the Maturing products of the 2010 /2011 NRL back to back junior Grand final Winning Teams ?

Sam Lousi is one example if you could see a use for a 6' 6" light footed offloading machine then it would be better for us to have Big Sam playing regular 1sts right now than playing reserve grade ( he was a hot prospect in the pre season trials and has been kept out by Injury ) now he's back in contention the incumbents are on a hot form streak and he wont get picked while that's the case ( long may it last ).

Konrad Hurrell ( another future super star kid with super human physical presence, young who is only in his third year of rugby league Bowled over Anthony Watmough on debut )

Konrad is bouncing in and out of first grade / needs some polishing......have a look at his youtube clips......Sam Lousi is the kid in the video "Rugby league Try of the decade " NZ Warriors juniors clip ( far from the try of the decade but for a bunch of teenagers you will see the potential we're excited about here ).

Other recent graduates from the 2011 team ( look up Shaun Johnsons Try against the Broncos )

I'm Sure you have players that would benefit us for short term boomerang deals.

As for whether any would want to come to England.....our boys fly back and forth to Australia every fortnight they many are prepped for the reality that they will end up having to chase contracts in other parts of the world as it is.....

Just food for thought.

So we get to keep NZ warriors kids in a game and keep them warm for a return there? We've got our own kids that are doing just fine and are all junior internationals. Our previous junior internationals have progressed in to full internationals.

We're not a club that needs cast offs or to be used as some sort of place for another clubs kids to get a game. We're Wigan Rugby League ffs, the biggest and most famous club in the game.

If Tomkins goes milk them for what we can get and move on. This deal will only benefit one set of Warriors and it ain't us.

Well intentioned though your posts are - I can honestly see that - you aren't the one making these decisions. The only names of players that are being mentioned at the present time are the British guys who'll be going to NZ. Clearly Sam is one, and maybe our coach Shaun Wane is another (though I personally doubt that). As far as we can see, no names are being lined up to come the other way - Locke was mentioned to be fair, but that story seems to have died a death. So you can understand why all this feels a bit like kidology.

As another poster said, we're not just anybody. We are Wigan, the most successful club in the British game, and a team who have beaten the Aussie champs several times in WCCs, including Brisbane in their own back yard. We would love to have access to some great young Kiwis, but those deals would have to be on terms that benefit us. We can't just bring a bunch of youngsters in on a 'boomerang deal', as you say, if that would hamper the development and opportunities for our own very exciting kids. They would need to be a proper signings - of at least a year or two years - with the new-arrivals understanding that they'd need to fit into the Wigan way of doing things and fight for their places.

But in any case, there is no sign of anything of the sort happening. At least not yet.

Lets use him as an example.

He is 22 so the only way he'd get any game time here is in the first team. That would mean he'd have to replace Thornley who is also a work in progress. We also have Gelling who can play centre, another work in progress, who is a Kiwi and also only plays if he can get in the 1st team and Hughes who has the no. 4 shirt but looks unlikely to keep it (in my opinion). Our other centre, Goulding is a top player so Hurrell would be competing for a 1st team place against the three other players already on the books.

Now if we signed Hurrell on a permanent deal because because he was a better player than any of those three that I have mentioned and because he fancied the overseas experience (a big reason Pat Richards came here) and if he wanted to make a commitment to the club for three years or longer then fine. Looking to improve the team is fine.

However all taking Hurrell for a season or two while he gained some experience before going home would do is probably prevent our current players from getting a game and improving themselves. They may well decide to leave as a result.

Part of the problem is the stupid U19 rule we have which means there is (and you won't believe this) no reserve grade footy available for players older than 19 who are foreign players and no dual registration for players older than 23 (where we send players to lower league sides on a kind of temporary basis). So if Hurrell got dropped he'd have nowhere to play. Can't see anyone like him coming on that basis if they are not being signed as a regular 1st team player.

These are the rules we operate under so unless they change the wisdom of taking short term signings from NZW seems about as sensible as selling Sam Tomkins!

So that's the deal, they get Sam, we get Jerry. Hope the op worked ok.

One of our main problems over the last few years has been keeping continuity within our playing squad. I really don't see what good bringing over a few fringe NZW players will do us when the likelihood is they'll go straight back as soon as they are offered an NRL opportunity. I think a "link-up" between the 2 clubs could be beneficial to both parties but not if it's just a glorified dual-reg system where we get players just because they can't break in the NZW first team, whilst they also pick and choose our best players.

The U19's are not being tested. I have raised this many times over the past 10 years.

We should be sending one or two of our better young players over to the NRL on an RL scholarship too see just how good they are. I have a feeling this will be one of the benefits of this link.

Will they come back though if they impress? That's the fear I've got.

It's also a fear of mine, but that academy league can't carry on as it is. It's not doing it's job of preparing the players for the next step.

I've spent many years agreeing with you on the quality of the various Academy structures we've had, but from an overall League viewpoint, I'd much rather see the lesser clubs compete better (which would then, hopefully, have a knock-on effect in SL too). Sending our good prospects abroad will, I think, work well for us, but doesn't help SL as a whole.

The RFL started to address the problem with their "home-grown-player" quota rule, but it doesn't go nearly far enough, for me.