General Nz Warriors And Wigan Warriors Partnership

[Apus]

https://www.warriors.co.nz/news-display/Vodafone-Warriors-and-Wigan-firm-up-partnership/78036

The Vodafone Warriors are hosting Wigan Warriors general manager Kris Radlinski this week as the two NRL and Super League clubs continue to develop a formal partnership.
Radlinski is spending three days in Auckland sharing ideas with Vodafone Warriors management and staff on the club’s commercial and football operations.
His visit follows a similar trip Vodafone Warriors chief executive Wayne Scurrah and general manager football operations Dean Bell made to Wigan recently.
“It makes a lot of sense for us to build towards a sister club relationship,” he said.
“We have the Warriors name in common and are looking to work together in all sorts of ways for the mutual benefit of both clubs.
“Our trip to England gave us a great insight into the way Wigan is run. It’s a club with such a fantastic history which we can learn a lot from.”
Radlinski has moved into the management team at Wigan after ending his playing career in 2006; an outstanding fullback, he played 30 Tests for Great Britain and England and made 322 appearances for the Wigan Warriors.
After a recruitment trip to Australia, Radlinski said a partnership between the two clubs would prove invaluable.
“I’ve been here only a day but there’s plenty I’ve learnt already that I can take back with me about how the Vodafone Warriors run their business,” he said.
“There are also many areas where the two of us can combine on projects.”
Scurrah and Radlinski said the possibility of a preseason match between the two clubs sometime in the future was appealing, a fixture which could be played in England or New Zealand or perhaps elsewhere.
Bell, a legendary figure at Wigan after his 253-game career, said a junior player exchange programme was also being discussed.


Considering everything going on with Tomkins and the idea of player swapping getting bandied about earlier, this comes as a very interesting development.

I think it's a pretty good idea, I'm very interested to see where it goes.

 

[KPWarrior]

Groundbreaking stuff, I quite like the idea

 

[Gee]

He is here for 3 days, so will the announcement of a signing / player transfer be made while he is here?

 

[Lord Gnome of Howick MBE]

I reckon we should take all their star players whilst they take our dross, who will still look good over there.

Also, Wigan could be the perfect place to blood our youngsters.

 

[Jay M]

Also, Wigan could be the perfect place to blood our youngsters.

Agree - a horrible place, where they learn what awful conditions are like - so they'll want to come back to Auckland and stay forever

 

[Lord Gnome of Howick MBE]

Agree - a horrible place, where they learn what awful conditions are like - so they'll want to come back to Auckland and stay forever

Agreed.

Also a place where they would get knocked around a bit to toughen them up.[DOUBLEPOST=1372219212][/DOUBLEPOST]

He is here for 3 days, so will the announcement of a signing / player transfer be made while he is here?

No, Tupou's gorne already

 

[OMG]

I find it a bit of a laugh really, this should have been done in the very beginning, it isn't like we haven't been involved with Wigan and it's players from day 1, they used to play in the winter too..The Warriors hahaha, How many years has Bell been in the club now? LOL, How many years has he been taking a holiday on the club in England?
It's a not a bad idea but how come it has taken this long? It would have been great to see Henry Paul in a NZ Warriors jersey for a season or 2..It's a bit of a bad joke in a few ways..

 

[OMG]

Agree - a horrible place, where they learn what awful conditions are like - so they'll want to come back to Auckland and stay forever

they play in summer, they still have some bad conditions but it's summer.

 

[Jay M]

they play in summer, they still have some bad conditions but it's summer.

but their pre-season training would be Dec-Feb... and their off-season, would be in horrible conditions

 

[Gizzyfan]

You watch the Aussies get paranoid over salary cap rorting. (thet think everyone is like them)

 

[Sup42]

The reason this is happening now and not all those years ago is Owen Glen.

The plan to build the best franchise in the Southern Hemisphere just took another step forward.

Dean Bell is the change agent at ground level , but this corporate Alliance has only come about out of change management in the Glen era ( remember Owen could Buy Wigan if It came up for sale ) .

The rumors of a certain Wigan player being traded for three NZ Warriors players now makes total sense.

The biggest difference between us and our sister club is we are yet to build the dominant dynasty in our own comp that Wigans culture brings to the table ( they can teach us a thing or two about winning your comp )

Other NRL clubs will follow suit and the two comps will merge in a more meaningful way than the world club challenge or the dumping of NRL rejects on the ESL moving forward imo.


The idea of a preseason friendly against Wigan will sell more tickets than trial games in either part of the world in their respective comps.


Lets imagine for a secound that this arrangement revives the glory days of NZ ESL following which ended in 1995 ( the same year the Golden erra of Wigan ended in the ESL ....coincidence ? )

Since the NRL are unlikely to give us a secound franchise as quickly as this could be set up............what do people think is the limit if the Wigan Warriors and NZ Warriors give kiwi sports fans two games a week to get parochial about ?


Sound like a good idea ?

Two league teams we love ?

League in NZ having two Kiwi relevant games to follow each weekend ?

This is where it is absolutely critical we lend Wigan some of our Best ......a year of the Beast on Wigans Wing.......a Season of Sam Lousi playing their secound row....


In the mean time England is populated with a few more bandwagon potential fans than NZ......how about having a few more million fans added to the NZ Warriors Experience.

For all those reasons I believe trying to dump rejecs on Wigan in a sister club arrangement would lack imagination

 

[HornbyBrown]

You watch the Aussies get paranoid over salary cap rorting. (thet think everyone is like them)

Lol you forgot we have a history of rorting the cap to....[DOUBLEPOST=1372223070][/DOUBLEPOST]Geat post Sup24. I think it's a great idea. It also just happens that Wigan is the english club i follow.

 

[Lord Gnome of Howick MBE]

they play in summer, they still have some bad conditions but it's summer.

Their season starts in February where they quite often play when it's snowing.

 

[Apus]

The reason this is happening now and not all those years ago is Owen Glen.

The plan to build the best franchise in the Southern Hemisphere just took another step forward.

Dean Bell is the change agent at ground level , but this corporate Alliance has only come about out of change management in the Glen era ( remember Owen could Buy Wigan if It came up for sale ) .

The rumors of a certain Wigan player being traded for three NZ Warriors players now makes total sense.

The biggest difference between us and our sister club is we are yet to build the dominant dynasty in our own comp that Wigans culture brings to the table ( they can teach us a thing or two about winning your comp )

Other NRL clubs will follow suit and the two comps will merge in a more meaningful way than the world club challenge or the dumping of NRL rejects on the ESL moving forward imo.


The idea of a preseason friendly against Wigan will sell more tickets than trial games in either part of the world in their respective comps.


Lets imagine for a secound that this arrangement revives the glory days of NZ ESL following which ended in 1995 ( the same year the Golden error of Wigan ended in the ESL ....coincidence ? )

Since the NRL are unlikely to give us a secound franchise as quickly as this could be set up............what do people think is the limit if the Wigan Warriors and NZ Warriors give kiwi sports fans two games a week to get parochial about ?


Sound like a good idea ?

Two league teams we love ?

League in NZ having two Kiwi relevant games to follow each weekend ?

This is where it is absolutely critical we lend Wigan some of our Best ......a year of the Beast on Wigans Wing.......a Season of Sam Lousi playing their secound row....


In the mean time England is populated with a few more bandwagon potential fans than NZ......how about having a few more million fans added to the NZ Warriors Experience.

For all those reasons I believe trying to dump rejecs on Wigan in a sister club arrangement would lack imagination

Well the report says a 'junior player exchange'. We have a plethora of NRL calibre players coming out of our club nowadays - not just players we keep, but we're constantly being pillaged by other clubs as well. If we can send some of those players to mature over in the SL and potentially come back to us as better players, that'd be amazing.

Makes me wonder about that spree of juniors we signed on 1 year deals recently. All players who have the ability, but there really aren't any spots for them in the next couple of years with us. If we could ship them off to the SL who seem to be a pretty big problem with backs, then bring them back in a couple of years when we actually need them, it could work out to be an amazing partnership.

 

[Freddie Futler]

Well the report says a 'junior player exchange'. We have a plethora of NRL calibre players coming out of our club nowadays - not just players we keep, but we're constantly being pillaged by other clubs as well. If we can send some of those players to mature over in the SL and potentially come back to us as better players, that'd be amazing.

Makes me wonder about that spree of juniors we signed on 1 year deals recently. All players who have the ability, but there really aren't any spots for them in the next couple of years with us. If we could ship them off to the SL who seem to be a pretty big problem with backs, then bring them back in a couple of years when we actually need them, it could work out to be an amazing partnership.

A partnership like that would really work well for both teams and gives young guys two bites at the cherry, the big OE or a FG spot here, seems a win win type deal.
Owen Glen didnt make his money flipping burgers and is a very astute man, great news for the fans.

 

[Sup42]

Well the report says a 'junior player exchange'. We have a plethora of NRL calibre players coming out of our club nowadays - not just players we keep, but we're constantly being pillaged by other clubs as well. If we can send some of those players to mature over in the SL and potentially come back to us as better players, that'd be amazing.

Makes me wonder about that spree of juniors we signed on 1 year deals recently. All players who have the ability, but there really aren't any spots for them in the next couple of years with us. If we could ship them off to the SL who seem to be a pretty big problem with backs, then bring them back in a couple of years when we actually need them, it could work out to be an amazing partnership.

Yes the report does say Junior player exchange but I extrapolated that idea deliberately ( If we get Tomkins that sets a precedent that is not at that jnr level )

Here's the thing.......we would make the NRL's treatment of us as the pariah club to send Marquee players too an absolute sitck it up your arse pay back if we can see our way to being open minded enough to realise that the combined forces of the 2 Warriors clubs would statistically ensure a likelyhood that neither would be short of depth.

We would unlikely ever be using secound rowers as outside backs ever again and Wigan would never be short of options when their local players don't measure up in the secound row for example.

The next level thinking with a Wigan merger is absolute genius and exactly how global corporations who are not in direct competition align themselves to crush the opposition.

A rugby league club is more than the players.....trades on all levels / a we are one concept would put other teams in both competitions at a serious disadvantage.

A what's yours is mine policy would ensure we operate inside the Salary cap in a way that goes even beyond what Rupert Murdoch did to the NRL with his pet teams Broncos and Storm.

This Wigan alliance would dwarf that in trend setting and make Rugby league a much bigger game in NZ than we could hope to imagine.

 

[Defence]

Doesnt their season finish before ours? Wonder if we could fly a couple of guys over for the run to the finals if we had a couple of injuries. For example vatuvei breaks his leg and laumape tears his hammy so we fly Charnley in on a short term deal

 

[Sup42]

Doesnt their season finish before ours? Wonder if we could fly a couple of guys over for the run to the finals if we had a couple of injuries. For example vatuvei breaks his leg and laumape tears his hammy so we fly Charnley in on a short term deal

The Mind boggles and the options on this one are endless , that's exactly the kind of wheeling and dealing that Owen Glen would need to set his best minds too , because frankly neither comp saw this coming ( I'm available Owen...I've got lots of ideas )

 

[HornbyBrown]

Doesnt their season finish before ours? Wonder if we could fly a couple of guys over for the run to the finals if we had a couple of injuries. For example vatuvei breaks his leg and laumape tears his hammy so we fly Charnley in on a short term deal

I seem to remember Andrew Johns going over to the ESL on a similar deal one year when Newcastle were clearly missing out on the finals. Could be wrong on that....

 

[mode81]

I fully embrace the concept of our club aligning with Wigan, they have a huge Kiwi connection and a successful history, now I've got two Warriors league teams to support.

I think it's a great initiative, it's outward thinking, it's innovative, new and bold , the possibility of player trading and intelligence sharing etc is all positive stuff, bring it on I say!