Re: Our youth system, does it hold us back? : Mon Jul 07, 2014 11:17 am
Aboveusonlypie wrote:
I think you are missing Matty Smith and Blake Green from your list here.
Both were good enough to win us the double and play pretty significant roles. They would get in most Super League sides quite easily. Green has just been signed as a starter for Melbourne, and I would have thought that Craig Bellamy is a good judge of a player. We haven't half missed him since his injury.
Smith has improved out of all recognition these past two years. Mentioning him as the best scrum half in Super League might be saying something about the overall standard of the competition and that may be true but that is a seperate argument. He made the dream team last season and this year only Walsh is better.
You might also add Flower to your list, again he would get into most sides.
They were all excellent signings. And the jury is still out on Pettybourne, Clubb and Sarginson. So overall the club have bought well recently. Only Dudson and James have struggled really.
Both were good enough to win us the double and play pretty significant roles. They would get in most Super League sides quite easily. Green has just been signed as a starter for Melbourne, and I would have thought that Craig Bellamy is a good judge of a player. We haven't half missed him since his injury.
Smith has improved out of all recognition these past two years. Mentioning him as the best scrum half in Super League might be saying something about the overall standard of the competition and that may be true but that is a seperate argument. He made the dream team last season and this year only Walsh is better.
You might also add Flower to your list, again he would get into most sides.
They were all excellent signings. And the jury is still out on Pettybourne, Clubb and Sarginson. So overall the club have bought well recently. Only Dudson and James have struggled really.
I was going to say that Flower, Smith and Green should all be in that list.
Pettybourne seems to earn praise from half our fans and criticism from the other half, without really doing enough to justify either as yet. Must admit I think Tautai will be a better impact player off the bench and I can't really see room in the 17 for both of them. Clubb has been excellent playing at prop after it became very obvious very quickly he was not a second row. Sarginson has played well although it's difficult to assign him to a position, similar story with Gelling.
Of all the signings we have made the only real disappointment for me has been Dudson. Despite improving his fitness levels he's never really kicked on to become a top quality front rower, and he makes too many errors and gives away too many silly penalties. Lauaki was an odd signing but he didn't do as badly as some make out before leaving under a cloud of off-field problems. Powell was a bit of PR stunt that might have paid off if he wasn't a complete clown. James was only ever going to be used when we had injuries and has generally performed adequately whilst at times being way off the pace.
Not every promsing junior is going to make it as a Wigan, or even SL first teamer. And equally with the SC in place not every player we bring in will be a superstar. We've made a number of long-term project signings in recent years with the thought that getting them to buy in to our culture and work hard would get them to reach their potential. There are question marks still over some of these but others have paid off. I have been very critical of some of our signings/non-signings in the past few years (no direct replacement for Hansen/oversubscribed with props and lack of backrowers/inexperienced left edge after Carmont and Richards left/no quality replacement being sought for Goulding etc), but when you look at our record whilst we've had this recent transfer policy it's difficult to argue with.
