Cruncher wrote:
I just feel we need to be planning for life without him.
At present he's a talisman player, but that can be a problem when the player in question is 37. The best players in the world haven't got much left in the tank at that age.
It's great to have a player so good that he can change a game on the rare occasions he appears, but what about when he suddenly can't appear because age has caught up with him? Who do you turn to then?
I've loved Lockers at Wigan, but he isn't the future. He isn't even the near-future ... and that's what we need to be looking to.
I think we’re more than doing our part at looking in to the future though to be fair to the club. That comes from the opportunities handed out by Lockers regular absences as much as anything but it’s left us really well positioned now to replace him. I recall 12-18 months back there being a debate about how we could possibly replace him and now we’re sat with Smithies, Shorrocks, Partington, Havard and Bateman as options to do just that (I’d personally rule Havard out of that list as I’d like him at prop but still).
I’m not banging a drum for him to play on as such but if there is room to offer him a playing spot and he wanted it, I’d not be against it as long as it didn’t knock on and mean we lost other, younger players. I just think he deserves a level of respect that means he retires when he wants to retire and that may mean we offer him £30-£40,000 a year only and he walks away and does a year at Toronto, Salford etc. I still think there’s a fair chance he’ll just call it quits anyway.
