The pubs are littered with "Rugby players" with their own stories of how they "Could have been a contender!" But it was the clubs/coaches/other players etc fault.



There will always be the occasional parent/player who feels they got the rough end of the stick so to speak, and they view their time at the club ending badly.

Reality is this club has got a fantastic record for developing, giving opportunities to and supporting youngsters off the field. It is widely viewed as one of if not the best academy in the country and reguallary acquires and retains the best talent.

It certainly does this far better than it did circa 2000 -2007



Sometimes tough decisions have to be made and that wont always go down well, be viewed by released player and family as being fair and also sometimes theyll get it wrong.

All I hope is the club are as successful with it over the next 10/12 years as they have been over the last.

I could have been a contender, if only I had been good enough and a bit less soft.

The recruitment of younger players into the club is outstanding to the point of being quite remarkable.



How many "club trained" players there are at Wigan RL I don't know but I'll bet we are the equal of any club and better than most. It was mentioned in the trade press that we have more overseas spots available than any other club in SL. Probably because we bring more through our youth systems than any other club.

The foundation of this success has to be recruitment. We don't hear much about it if anything at all at junior level but it has been quite outstanding.

That was put in place by IL and probably with Joe Lydon's help back in 2008/9 or so.

The club and us fans should be proud of what has been achieved over the past decade with recruitment and junior development.

All of you defending it are just looking at the finished product, the nice shiney end. I wasn’t a player nor am I a relative of a player but my experience seriously made me look at the club in a different light.



I’d say some of the projects they run might get a group of 100 lads and get 1 SL player out of it (hooray, it’s successful) but you’ll get at least 50 of those turn their backs on RL and us as a club.



Also, this isn’t a ‘wah, some players don’t make it boo hoo’. I get that, but a club as big and famous as us should be setting standards. Anyone comes and gets involved in the club who is participating in some sort of training programme should be treated as best they can. Also if there’s only so much room, ( I believe it’s 20 under 16s) you can ‘sign’ then there shouldn’t be any other schemes that offer false hope just to get the net a bit wider.

Rugby is a lot like any other sport, the outstanding get picked up but they get recruited along with lot who get there because of who they know, happens so much in rugby both codes

Snap

As a three time runner up in the world's tallest dwarf contest I feel your pain

As a parent of a lad who (although played for a great team a few years ago) was never going to make it into any scholarships I did notice that 'some' parents of 'some' kids that did make it into Wigan's scholarship year 1 suddenly acquired that certain swagger of "my lad has made it with Wigan". From a group of 6-7 from our amateur club all but one were let go by year 2.



I've heard that at this level Wigan can be seen as quite ruthless, heard accusations that they don't treat all the lads that well, have favourites.. etc (which I found funny as this is something we had to put up with at amateur level). Some moved to Saints & Widnes as they 'treat their lads better' whether this is true or not I don't know.



Yes it's ruthless at Wigan....and so it should be.

I think it was Rads book where he said back in the day he came through he had to work extra hard as he wasn't the most skilful player in the reserves but there were others striding around town thinking they'd made it that were lost to the game a few years later, whilst he was winning honours.

Spot on, and is why we succeed year after year at that level. We then have to be ruthless again in who can take the next step

I was completely impartial and I’m a Wigan fan, so I’d be more biased toward the club in theory. I’d agree with what you’ve heard aswell re favourites and ruthless.

It can be the nature of any professional sport. Football is even more ruthless. I know one man who was the step father of a wonderkind whose wife got a message asking her to provide details of the lads estranged father so that they could judge if the lad was likely to grow. Another lad I was working with had been understudy to Grobelaar(????) at Liverpool and England under 21 goalkeeper but was having to retrain having failed to make the grade. He was a lucky one because some of those boys are given everything and everything is done for them and it suddenly disappears and it is easy to go off the rails. Not that that makes the treatment handed out to some of the youngsters right but the attrition rate is awful. I had always hoped that the education side of playing at Wigan would soften the blow

Only a very low % of Wigan's youth ever make it into regularly into the first team squad. I seem to remember back in the early nineties a quote from the club stating they would be happy to see two young players come through on a yearly basis. I'd say it's increased to more like 4-5 these last few years.



However one silver lining for these lads is most seem to get picked up at other clubs. Some have made it to NRL, most to other SL clubs, with the rest to championship clubs. Such is the excess of quality we have.



Of those that quit the game altogether theres obviously other reasons for this:



Financial.

Other career aspirations.

Fell out of love with the game.

Girls & Drink.