Re: Players you always wanted to make it at Wigan, but didn' : Sun Nov 04, 2018 10:53 am  

dany1979 wrote:

Denis Moran, recommended to Wigan by the player he replaced...Adrian Lam.

Moran was a brilliant support player at London but was asked to play a different role with Wigan and suffered as a result. I’m pretty sure Radlinski says something similar to this in his book.

I felt sorry for Moran at Wigan, the criticism he received should have been directed at the person that decided to use him as an organising scrum half. If Moran had been playing outside of somebody like Dobson it would have been a completely different story.

Moran was 4th in the assists chart in his first year at Wigan. He was playing in a dire team that was just low on confidence, he was on a hiding to nothing from the off. He wasn't a great player, but he was no where near as bad as people made out.

Re: Players you always wanted to make it at Wigan, but didn' : Sun Nov 04, 2018 12:25 pm  

ChrisA wrote:

Moran was 4th in the assists chart in his first year at Wigan. He was playing in a dire team that was just low on confidence, he was on a hiding to nothing from the off. He wasn't a great player, but he was no where near as bad as people made out.

Gavin Clinch was far worse

Re: Players you always wanted to make it at Wigan, but didn' : Sun Nov 04, 2018 12:35 pm  

He was bad was Clinch!

Re: Players you always wanted to make it at Wigan, but didn' : Sun Nov 04, 2018 5:33 pm  

Moran was painfully bad. You guys must have a short memory. What good is a 7 if all he can do is support? Before anyone mentions Edwards, Edwards could also organise and direct the team. Moran was gash and was rightly criticised for some shocking displays.

Re: Players you always wanted to make it at Wigan, but didn' : Sun Nov 04, 2018 5:47 pm  

Matthew Johns. Many people thought he was living off his brothers reputation but he was a good player in his own right. He was the best long passer of the ball ive ever seen left or right. Newcastle fans were gutted when he left. For some reason he just never settled at Wigan but we did see some glimpses of him putting players through holes. A few years ago Andrew Johns was answering questions on a forum and mine was one of the questions that got picked. I asked him how did he and Matty become such great long passers of the ball. His reply was that when they were young they lived near a train track and would practice by standing on the embankments and passing the ball to each other over the freight trains as they passed.

Re: Players you always wanted to make it at Wigan, but didn' : Tue Nov 06, 2018 12:32 am  

ChrisA wrote:

Moran was 4th in the assists chart in his first year at Wigan. He was playing in a dire team that was just low on confidence, he was on a hiding to nothing from the off. He wasn't a great player, but he was no where near as bad as people made out.

True, I remember him being a dangerous player for London but Wigan made a poor decision in signing him as a 7, it would be very interesting to get Adrian Lams view on this as he was obviously a big fan of his.

Reading between the lines it can’t of helped given who was coaching the side too.

Re: Players you always wanted to make it at Wigan, but didn' : Tue Nov 06, 2018 1:18 am  

Tim Smith, off field issues, on field...

Re: Players you always wanted to make it at Wigan, but didn' : Tue Nov 06, 2018 10:10 am  

Stuart Fielden, Danny Orr, David Vaeliki, Shaun Ainscough, Karl Pryce... not to mention young kids who were touted as world beaters like Mark Flanagan (he was a coup as a youngster from Bradford, IIRC) and James Coyle, who never really kicked on.

Re: Players you always wanted to make it at Wigan, but didn' : Tue Nov 06, 2018 11:45 am  

Kernel wrote:

Stuart Fielden, Danny Orr, David Vaeliki, Shaun Ainscough, Karl Pryce... not to mention young kids who were touted as world beaters like Mark Flanagan (he was a coup as a youngster from Bradford, IIRC) and James Coyle, who never really kicked on.

I seem to recall people who watched St Pats sagely telling everyone that Logan was going to be the best Tomkins. Iain Thornley was OK but people had much higher expectations of him too.

Re: Players you always wanted to make it at Wigan, but didn' : Tue Nov 06, 2018 1:00 pm  

Quentin Pongia.