He's probably first or second in line to be England's half-back, so a bit better than run-of-the-mill. I'd say.

I agree. Class act, Wire have done good business.

What £75k!!!

Does he get the extra 300k for free or do the club still have to pay it out of their budget?

I must have slept through all these world class game changing games he had for us. All i remember is him being slated for not being good enough. All of a sudden he has morphed into Darren Lockyer.

Good player but not a great one (certainly not one to spend 300k plus on) I would’ve been happy to have him but it’s not to be. The game needs stories sometimes and to have a pantomime villain to get stuck in to will add to the narrative of Wire/Wigan games next year and won’t do the fixture any harm.

I just hope there are funds available to say ‘we move on’ and strengthen the areas that need it urgently. If there are then those Wigan v Wire games could have some real spark next season.

Probably because the English halves are mostly god awful and England have a coach who would pick a side from the WN postcode if he wouldn't get any abuse for it.

He did have some top games and sometimes people wanted far too much from him but what I would say is that he’s a bit of a flat track player. I can recall some big performances in run of the mill games from him but not too many in big games. I always felt he was very cautious in semi finals, cup finals, grand finals etc.

Let me put it another way. what does he do so much better as a half that lads like Richardson, Drinkwater and Lolohea can't do to warrant being paid so much more than them? I would genuinely like to know.

On another note, the lads that come over from Australia with their big reputations and even bigger ego's ALWAYS fail. It's the hidden gems like Carmont and Richards we need to be seeking out. What the hell happened to our scouting set up. I will do it Mr. Lenegan, give me a grand a week and i will find you a top player from one of the feeder leagues.

Not that simple as players have to have played a certain number of NRL games or International games to qualify for a visa.

That's another thing that bugs me, somebody from Libya can come here to work in a warehouse on £250 a week then disappear when the visa expires but a professional sports team can't get permits for giving somebody guaranteed well paid employment thus pumping thousands into the tax kitty. Baffling.

A lot of rewriting history going on here. Williams was very good for us and always near the top of the SL try assists chart. He cemented his place in the team as a 20/21 year old - Harry Smith is struggling to do that now at 21.

Williams was exciting to watch and often made breaks from nothing, he is deceptively quick and usually backs up breaks, very good kicking game close to the line and very strong defence.

He is only “worth” £300k+ now because of the NRL’s inflated salaries vs. SL. Most of the top NRL halfbacks are on £400-500k.

Shaun Johnson is on £550k - people on here the other week wanted to sign him.

We paid George Burgess in the region of £300-400k so the club is obviously willing to part with large sums for top players.

The difference between us and Wire is also that we know exactly how much we paid GW prior to his NRL move which was barely 18 months ago. If that was £175k and Wire are giving him £350k (for example), the club knows full well his value hasn’t risen 100% in 18 months.

Williams is absolutely worth a marquee spot. Let's not pretend he isn't just because we didn't get him. The big question is who we do get.

Undoubtedly he was a better fit for us than most other HB's out there. Simply because of the cap relief we'd have got for him. We might get a better player, we might get a worse one, but very few would have matched the value of GW on the cap.

That doesn't mean he's worth an inflated salary though. Ultimately we'll never really know how much Wire are paying him, but I'm 100% certain that if any club knew his value, it was ours. We'll have offered him what he was worth and that's the way it should be imo.

I also don't buy into the "we're broke" BS that you read. We've paid plenty of top dollar for players and I'm sure guys like Hastings and Bateman will be on big money. Just because we don't want to pay that for GW, doesn't suddenly mean we don't have it.

Only £75k counts on the cap. You stated you would be “spunking most of your cap” on him. You obviously don’t know a lot about RL

There’s one thing for sure, we absolutely won’t get a half that’s better than or even as good as GW full stop, never mind for less of a salary.

Oh do Warrington only have to pay 75k?

You're right, i obviously don't.

'Spunking most of our cap' A back handed dig at Warrington i.e Warrington have. You obviously don't know a lot about a subtle dig.


This is Warrington though. They are probably paying him minimum wage on his official contract. Where the rest comes from, god knows.

Then we need to take the opportunity to add extra quality in other areas.

Toronto used to pay huge signing on fees, which I believe do not count towards the cap, and a fairly standard salary £30-60k per year. I don’t know if Wire have done this with GW mind but notably they haven’t announced his signing as of yet so there’s clearly a few issues to iron out.

Bottom line is that he didnt want to come back and play for us, just as Edwards didnt want to come back and coach us.

If its not about money, then there is something going on behind the scenes that is putting folk off coming back to Wigan. Something that IL doesnt want to let the fans know - otherwise why wouldnt he push for a compensation package from GW/Wire for reneging on a legally binding deal?

What do you think that is?

A secret reign of terror instigated by IL and KR? A culture of utter ruthlessness? A total lack of moral scruple? Inflexibility on an epic scale when it comes to contract enforcement etc?

All the evidence suggests the exact opposite is true. Whatever the problem, it didn't prevent Bateman coming back, or Sarginson, or Budgie.

And I wouldn't use IL's refusal to sue Williams as proof that something is wrong. How would it look, trying to legally oblige someone to play for us who really doesn't want to? And who wants to get into court cases etc? Look at what happened with Iestyn Harris. After all that fuss, the guy was rubbish when he finally started playing again.

Better just to accept that for whatever reason, both Edwards and Williams changed their mind (Edwards gave various reasons depending on who was interviewing him), while Williams seems to be in a bit of a mess at the moment and clearly wants some kind of fresh start.

All we really know is that two sons of Wigan have dumped on the Wigan club. I don't understand why it always has to be Wigan's fault.

IMO there’s 2 realistic reasons he’s not coming back.

1: The Warrington financial offer was too good to turn down.

2: He simply wants a new challenge. I’m sure he’s noticed that the players who have returned have generally struggled when they’ve come back. I can’t think of a single one who has been better than when they left and he felt as though the same would happen to him.

Maybe he also felt his chances of silverware are better at Warrington than Wigan. When you look at the players they are signing and being linked with compared to us I can’t blame him for that.

I don’t see this being indicative of problems behind the scenes at Wigan. He’s the only player thus far that we wanted to re-sign and haven’t.

It could be a blessing in disguise for us if we invest the budget we would have paid Williams into a couple of decent props.

Such a strategy wouldn't make a difference to cap spend. The proportion of the cap taken up by a player is determined by their 'salary cap value', this is a figure determined by the governing body and isn't necessarily the same as the amount going into their pay packet. If the governing body determine that a player is worth £150k (Williams' likely value if he is a marquee player at Warrington) then a club cannot pay him less than that in order to fit him in under their cap limit. If they could do that then Warrington would not be looking to shift players to accommodate signing him. Warrington can pay Williams as much or as little as they wish to, and he agrees to, but it is the governing body that will decide how much of their allotted cap he takes up regardless of his wages.

Learn something new everyday

I agree with this but I also think there may be 3rd reason. The unfair abuse and criticism he got from an awful lot of our fans in his last season before going to Canberra was embarrassing at times. The lad is a cracking player and never gave us less than 100%. If he read half the comments that were written about him I’m not surprised he didn’t want to come back.