Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Wed May 24, 2023 10:26 pm  

I always felt with the way Bateman left Canberra there was a chance he’d do the same to Wigan,so it wasn’t .a huge surprise when the news broke he was going back.

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Thu May 25, 2023 6:44 am  

The Yellow Giraffe wrote:

Technically yes Wigan were creative with the truth but it’s PR that you’d expect not just from Wigan but from any club so I wouldn’t hold it against them.

It was common knowledge amongst the Wigan players and staff well before the World Cup that Bateman was heading back to the NRL.

It seemed common knowledge everywhere. I get why we’d do it, especially if the cap space had pretty much already gone, because everyone then calls for a replacement and the club can say ‘sorry people, it’s too late to find anyone’. It feels strange that Wigan would throw Bateman under a bus though, by saying he’d left us in the lurch in leaving things so late. Maybe that was the agreement in allowing him to go, i.e ‘you can go if you agree we say you’ve screwed us over and not that you’ve given us plenty of time to source a replacement’.

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Thu May 25, 2023 11:23 am  

The Yellow Giraffe wrote:

Technically yes Wigan were creative with the truth but it’s PR that you’d expect not just from Wigan but from any club so I wouldn’t hold it against them.

It was common knowledge amongst the Wigan players and staff well before the World Cup that Bateman was heading back to the NRL.

No it wasn’t. It was common knowledge that Bateman wanted to go but no deal was struck until after the World Cup. In fact there was no deal has Wests Tigers initially refused to cough up a transfer fee. Wigan were in a panic as the signings of Wardle and King would have put them over the cap. The deal with French was struck prior to any agreement with Bateman.

Anyway, we will just have to disagree regarding the facts.

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Thu May 25, 2023 3:24 pm  

And at any rate, who'd swap Bateman for French now?

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Thu May 25, 2023 3:41 pm  

moto748 wrote:

And at any rate, who'd swap Bateman for French now?

Bateman is the biggest reason for the transformation at Wests.

They don’t know how to handle him over there.

If he qualified he’d walk into Origin.

Interesting that he’s suited to the NRL these days more than he is SL.

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Thu May 25, 2023 4:05 pm  

jonh wrote:

Bateman is the biggest reason for the transformation at Wests.

They don’t know how to handle him over there.

If he qualified he’d walk into Origin.

Interesting that he’s suited to the NRL these days more than he is SL.

Surely that's all in the mind. Some players consider it a much bigger competition and therefore try a lot harder than they do over here. We've seen that with a number of Aussies who've come to the UK.

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Thu May 25, 2023 4:10 pm  

He was just going through the motions when here. Often dominated in tackles and full of errors.

So frustrating seeing him play well over there. Last great year for us was 2018.

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Thu May 25, 2023 5:14 pm  

Cruncher wrote:

Surely that's all in the mind. Some players consider it a much bigger competition and therefore try a lot harder than they do over here. We've seen that with a number of Aussies who've come to the UK.

I just think because he hasn’t developed in the Australian system he is totally unlike any other secondrow over there and very unorthodox which they can’t work out.

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Thu May 25, 2023 6:50 pm  

Zig wrote:

No it wasn’t. It was common knowledge that Bateman wanted to go but no deal was struck until after the World Cup. In fact there was no deal has Wests Tigers initially refused to cough up a transfer fee. Wigan were in a panic as the signings of Wardle and King would have put them over the cap. The deal with French was struck prior to any agreement with Bateman.

Anyway, we will just have to disagree regarding the facts.

I didn’t say there was a deal with Wests. I said he was going back to the NRL, one way or another. Wigan knew he was going when they gave French the new deal. They couldn’t have given French the deal if Bateman had stayed - that is a fact.
To say the deal with French was struck before Bateman signed a NRL is true - but it was struck knowing that a NRL would be signed.

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Thu May 25, 2023 11:44 pm  

I think Wests' revival has has been more about Brooks regaining his confidence, and the emergence of Bula, than Bateman.