Every week this year I'm going to try and do a bit of a 'deep dive' into some of the bigger news stories of the week. I start with one close to my cherry and white heart.
It finally was confirmed this week that two of Wigan's first team regulars during the Shaun Wane era have left the club.
Michael McIlorum, 29, will be lost to the club he's been at for 14 years, man and boy. Thankfully he will not be lost to the Super League competition. He'll just now be wearing the colours of Catalan Dragons.
Anthony Gelling, 27, leaves Wigan and Super League after six seasons that saw him rise to the position of 'Man of the People' and two-time SLP Clown of the Year for his fun try celebrations and off-field hi-jinks.
So, which of these players will leave a bigger hole in the Wigan squad?
Gelling has been directly replaced in the player merry-go-round by the re-signing of centre Dan Sarginson. It looks highly unlikely that any new signing will be made to replace McIlorum in the Wigan squad. From that, you could say it looks like McIlorum may be the bigger miss.
However, it could be argued hooker is a well covered spot in the Wigan squad. Tommy Leuluai looks likely to spend more in his international position, interchanging with 2016 Grand Final and 2017 World Club Challenge winner Sam Powell - a big success in McIlorum's absence it must be said - with young rising star Josh Ganson as back up.
Both take with them some big game experience and winners medals from their time at Wigan. However Gelling, unlike McIlorum, was a major part of Wigan's two most recent successes at Old Trafford in 2016 and over the Cronulla Sharks to open 2017, as McIlorum sat out both games through injury. It was 2013 when McIlorum last lifted some silverware, in a try scoring Grand Final win to complete that year's double for Wigan.
Over the four seasons we've been doing SLP, Gelling has featured in 12 more Super League games than McIlorum and has a marginally better win success rate in that time, 68% to McIlorum's 65%.
Gelling is prone to the odd mistake - he gives up 1 more handling error for every two games played than the average Super League centre over the last four years, as well as having an 85% tackle success rate compared to the average for centres of 90% over that same four year period. He does though make up for this with his work rate and output in attack - making 6 more carries and 50 more metres per game than your average Super League centre. In the last four years he contributed more tries, assists, tackle busts, clean breaks and successful offloads than your average centre. He has been, more often than not, a force for good.
McIlorum has a reputation. For hard hits yes, but also for ones that I might call mistimed and you might call dirty, depending on your rooting interests. He actually averages fewer penalties per game during the the SLP years than the average hooker does I'm pleased to report - about 1 fewer penalty conceded for every 10 games played. The thing is though, his hard hitting intentions also see him miss more tackles than your average Super League hooker, tackling at a 91% success rate compared to the average hooker who tackles at 94% over the last four years.
Whilst it isn't completely fair to compare per game averages for hookers in the same way it is for centres, due to some teams using interchange hookers and other playing one guy for 80 minutes, some numbers can still be suggestive, and one thing the numbers for McIlorum suggest is that he isn't as creative as the average hooker - his per game number for tries scored is below the average and his figures for assists and clean breaks are less than half the average. Sam Powell outperforms McIlorum in all of these areas and is much closer to the league average in his creative attacking output over the last four years, as well as his defensive output being better than league average too.
Both Gelling and McIlorum have been part of successful times at Wigan, and both players will undoubtedly be missed in the squad and by the fans. The facts and stats I've mentioned don't cover the intangibles - the times where a big hit from McIlorum has brought the fans to their feet and awoken their voices, or the times where a Gelling offload has been ill-judged, bringing groans rather than cheers from the stands. For these reasons, many Wigan fans will miss McIlorum more.
I'm going to miss both just as much as I'm going to cheer for whoever pulls on the #3 and #9 jerseys at Wigan in 2018. But for me, based on recent experience, I think Gelling may well be harder to replace than McIlorum in the Wigan squad. And to top that off, off the pitch, for us fans of Super League, Gelling has been one of a kind.
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Another topic I was going to go into but decided against a full scale opinion piece on was drugs in our sport. Once again they hit the headlines, with Ryan Bailey of Toronto earning a reprieve from his missed test in May 2017 following legal challenge and, much more disappointingly, former Dewsbury Rams player Donald Kudangirana being suspended for a period of three years and seven months following an Anti-Doping Rule Violation.
Kudangirana tested positive for the presence of the prohibited substances Drostanolone and Testosterone, and their respective metabolites. He was tested out-of-competition, during a Dewsbury Rams training session on 14 December 2016 and suspended by the club in February 2017. This is just the latest in a long line of drug related news stories we've had to cover during the four years of SLP. Hopefully the recent sentences being handing around will serve as a deterrent for any future rule violations. If this news had broken yesterday it might have featured in my hopes for 2018!
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Thanks for reading, look out for more regular pieces like this throughout 2018.
Don't forget, our #AskSLP festive special is still available to listen to on Spreaker, iTunes and League Cast android app if you haven't heard it already. Also, our 2018 predictions will soon be open for you to give us all your views ahead of a new Rugby League season.
Mark
SLP
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