You're too kind!

It hardly matters. As you've seen, all kinds of excuses are still being given as to why the RFL should not do anything to keep our young talent in the game.

Thats why sam is on a deal until the end of 2014, he proved himself in 2009 and got a contract



What gets my goat is players in the youth side saying i want this, i want that when they have not proved themselves and are not even next in line for the first team



Other superleague clubs may have to compete with th dark side for some of wigans youth production line but thats not our problem, you cant keep everyone

At the end of the day we can't keep all our young talent and sometimes it may be better for us (as Wigan not RL) to let them go to Union (see Huddersfields win at the DW) However, it is certainly detrimental to the sport as a whole and the RFL should do something to help stop it.

What the hell has this got to do with anything.

Because I am a Saints fan you decide to have a go,I will say it again it has nothing to do with Wigan being top dogs.

My concern is for ALL the young talent in RL from every club in the land,this is not a Saints/Wigan debate it's for the RFL to stop our best talent from going to union.

And as for certain Saints fans for having a go cause you have lost talent to union well they are wrong for doing so.

This has nothing to do with Eastmond being a target for RU.

I said exactly the same when Chris Ashton went to union.

I know there are quite a few Saints fans who feel the same as me.

I don't want the likes of Sam Tomkins going to union(I am not saying he will).

My point is all RL clubs and the RFL have to do something to stop this from happening.

Agree totally but 'Fielding' annoys me more.

Double post

Wigan could easily have paid Ashton that contract if they wanted to, they chose to offer him peanuts. Ashton signed for Northampton in March 2007. In the following off season Wigan then signed Andy Coley, Richie Mathers, George Carmont and Karl Pryce, with Tim Smith and Cameron Phelps signing mid-season.



Are you seriously suggesting that had Ashton been offered the salaries of Pryce/Smith/Phelps/Mathers combined (all of whom were flops or struggled to get game time) he'd have left for the money? Wigan made a commercial decision not to offer Ashton more than they thought he was worth.



When union were sniffing around Eastmond, Saints considered him worthy of big enough money to get him to sign a new deal. Wigan didn't with Ashton.



No doubt union will come sniffing around Eastmond again at the end of next season and Saints will have another decision to make. If Saints say they can't compete then go and sign the likes of Smith/Pryce/Phelps/Mathers to play in our reserves, I'll be a little bit miffed.

You're missing the point here. Without the salary cap Wigan could have signed those players as well as Ashton but because offering Ashton the same as Union did would mean not getting those other players they didnt because it would be silly to have 1 player instead of many. Its like Buying one CD at £9 when its 2 for £10.

firstly hindsight is a wonderful thing we didn't sign flops deliberately, secondly Ashton was offered a very good deal for a young lad and paying him substantially more than his peers would at best damage team morale and at worst set a chain in motion with all our young lads trying to get offers from union in order to talk their value up, wouldn't be too tricky for some of them. We were hardly world beaters when Ashton was at the club, we had some tremendous performances from him personally and some poor ones too, he seemed to have a bit of an attitude problem which Northampton Saints discovered when he was in his 2nd season for them, he was great in the first year when all was going good for him. Could we really afford the risk of being 3 men down on the squad to accommodate him? doubtful! 3 years on we are Super League Champs with Sam, Richards and Roberts (for a short period due to injury) all among the best fullbacks in Super League, Chris Ashton would not have made the slightest difference to our teams performances under Noble and we're managing to move on from the days of one or two players earning a fortune and have a large squad of players the vast majority of whom (as Sinfield described the Leeds side on SL supermen) play for the club they love regardless of the fact they could well earn more money elsewhere.



Perhaps if St Helens hadn't decided to pay Eastmond a fortune to keep him 'loyal' you may well have had a larger squad and been able to cope with the injuries you've been moaning about all season.



If anyone demands a massive wage increase to stop them going to union let them go, if the club's youth system is good enough they will produce more players who will learn through excellent team spirit and motivation that they're playing for their teammates, fans and managers, not just for the money.

I know the point about the salary cap - union have one too.



Northampton decided Ashton was worth a good chunk of their salary cap and have been vindicated as he's bloomed into an international back.



Wigan decided it would be better to allow Ashton to leave and use up cap space that could have been spent on retaining him on a number of average players like Mathers, Pryce, Phelps, Smith. To me, that was a poor decision, but it was Wigan's decision.



That's without getting on to the fact that Wigan have been losing money at the current cap level in a new stadium, so to make out they can spend whatever they want on players (i.e. sign all the aforementioned guff in addition to keeping Ashton) is misleading.