I remember every Hull fan slating Tevita Vaikona when he left for Bradford , a year after Steve McNamara had. I was speaking to McNamara at a sportsman's dinner and what he said made perfect sense. RL is a short career, if you're lucky enough to avoid serious injury, and you're looking for another career pretty much from the age of 32 . Nobody can begrudge players maximising the wages they earn during this time, sentiment aside as they generally don't all become coaches and end up retraining for secular employment , outside of the game. All those fans, who speak from their heart disagree with that he said, those that speak with their heads understand, however much they do not like it. Pretty much summed it up for me .

yes, didnt see anyone saying Danson wont invest any money

We werent when Lydon and Hanley came

Fans demand loyalty from players but want rid as soon as a player’s form drops. Loyalty should be a 2 way street but in sport it isn’t. Players are all too aware of this having seen colleagues or even themselves slated by fans of their team live or on social media.

I wonder how many of our supporters who gave him abuse week after week on the terraces are now up in arms for allegedly not coming back to us.

I know a few of em

There may be a number of reasons why Wigan haven't been able to secure GW's signing. One of which may be that we had already agreed deals for our big signings next season (prop + half back) not yet announced. The Mole announced a few months ago that Wigan were in the market for a NRL prop.

I'm not talking about these rumoured signings that have come lately, if there's any truth in these they are likely to be 'top up signings'.

Lets not forget that GW leaving Canberra was a bolt out of the blue, was expected to stay in Aus until 2023 at least.

We'd lost George Burgess at the beginning of the season, Hastings announced he was leaving at the end of this season. Plans were already in place with agents two months ago.

We could simply be just a victim of timing.

Yeah but I abuse every player

I am inclined to agree here. I also believe we won’t know any different if he signs elsewhere and we’ll move on, as we have done already, without him. Plus each player has their worth. Perhaps we didn’t believe he was worth the money Wire were offering, which I can imagine was astronomical.

My only questions to your post would be; why wait to announce it? We knew we were in for a prop weeks ago and props come relatively cheaply - surely that isn’t making it so our budget is so stretched we can’t sign GW?

I can also agree with the point that our recruitment is worrying with 3 Championship quality players allegedly inbound to a club that wants to remain challenging for titles and cups. It’s concerning for me as with the coach we have, the players we have been linked with (if not signed) and the dreadful playing style we have currently; i just can’t believe we’ll be anything other than a 5th-8th place team sooner rather than later if this continues. Far from doom mongering I think some people may need to take their blinkers off and realise the gravity of it.

This isn’t because we haven’t signed GW, even securing his signature I’d still be concerned. Rather the general direction of the club that for my money just appears lost like a ship without a rudder. Some poor recruitment/retention decisions have and are being made which need to be rectified.

Generally the club seem poor in managing the expectations of supporters to the point that it can affect the bottom line in the form of ticket sales. Our recruitment so far has not been impressive and the overall impression is that the club is in some form of managed decline. At the same time Warrington seem to have a blank cheque and the kind of pull that we just cannot manage. Once that decline sets in it takes something major to halt the cycle. Even when we can get decent players to sign they seem to be using us as a stepping stone. A couple of good signings will paper over the cracks but the club needs a rethink from the bottom up.

Has anything actually been announced? I just keep hearing nothing has been sorted for GW yet.

I won't pretend I'm not disappointed, though all along I said that we have other holes to plug in this team.

In the salary cap era, you can't really make luxury purchases at the expense of essential ones.

It would be nice, though, if we announced a really stonking signing from somewhere.

The Wigan fans have had a rough new months since that Grand Final disappointment. All the talk has been injuries, departures, star players underperforming, and there's still no land in sight when it comes to piling in for home fixture full houses again. We must be due something.

Full houses? We can't even sell 6000 season tickets.

All reasons we would be in pole position IMO, rather than a club maxing the cap who'd have to do some restructuring just to fit GW, also when you consider he is VFM in terms of cap due to being home grown....

Probably all irrelevant now

The ongoing impact of the drop in season ticket numbers will be clearer once we have a season that has certainty post pandemic. I would think that a proportion of the c.3000 people that didn't renew chose not to buy a season ticket as it was a leap of faith to buy one. We had no idea how many home games we would be able to attend or how many will be able to attend each of those (and we still can't be certain to some extent due to the latest Covid variant). I did renew mine but I wouldn't blame anyone that chose not to when they didn't know what value they would get out of the purchase. Just how many of those 3000 fans return to being regular attendees post pandemic will determine how the club is affected mid to long term.

I'm not under any illusions about that. I still reckon we'd pull a few in for Wire, Saints etc.

But that's another reason why none of it feels great at present.

There's a worrying feeling of malaise.

I agree with what someone said earlier about us needing to completely restructure the playing and training staff. New players, new coach, new conditioners etc. Basically, a new broom to transform the atmosphere, much the way Madge did back in 2010. But maybe that's not possible. Don't even like to think what state the club's finances must currently be in.

And jukesays i'm wrong to use posts on here as a barometer of current fan satisfaction?

I can fully understand why we may not have sold 6000 season tickets this year due to the uncertainty back in January of how many games would be played in front of supporters. The vast majority of our fans showed generosity & loyalty last year by donating the season ticket money only a month into the season still had their fingers burned. You can understand a reluctance to shell out up front again when finances at home are possibly more strained.

With another 4 weeks delay it's a race to see which comes first, end of Lockdown vs Gildart in the team again.

Sorry didn't read your post before posting myself. Fully agree, my thoughts exactly.

The number of season tickets sold is purely down to a Covid restrictions. I was late in applying for one and was told I couldn’t have one as the deadline had passed and the limit was reached.

So can I, especially when we didn't actually have much more than that anyway.

The comment was more in relation to us getting back to full houses. We only get one of them every 2 years as it is.

I'd be happy getting back to 5 figure crowds at the minute

Another reason possibly....and i'm gonna say what a few have been maybe thinking too. We do have a very old fan base, look around the stadium on match days and there are literally hundreds and hundreds of supporters, men & women aged 65+

Its quite likely that sadly quite a few supporters haven't made it through the pandemic (hope I'm wrong and numbers are low) however a couple of weeks ago the club asked for names and photos to be sent in of supporters lost in the last 12 months so they can put together a tribute video on the big screen during a match this year.

Edit - Realised we have gone off topic.

I don’t think directly clashing with England-Scotland in a major tournament will have helped.

One game yes, but as for it impacting season tickets it's not the best excuse I've heard.

My lad, season ticket holder deciding to stay home for that. First home game in fifteen months.....silly boy!