A new breed emerging
LEAGUE EXPRESS looks ahead to a new season that will be rich in promise for a new generation of Wigan stars
DEPARTURES
How do you replace an iconic captain who has played 403 Super League games for Wigan since making his debut in 2002? We’ll come to that in a moment, but retiring captain Sean O’Loughlin is only one of a number of players from last season who won’t be at the DW Stadium in 2021.
Joe Burgess will head to Salford after 115 Super League games (and a stint in the NRL for Sydney Roosters and South Sydney in 2016, where he played 13 games) alongside Morgan Escaré and Jack Wells, who played 45 and 17 Super League games for Wigan respectively, with Escaré not getting a game in 2020 and Wells playing only twice.
The player whose departure was unplanned, however, was George Burgess, whose hip problem finally got the better of him last month and forced a retirement that will hopefully be temporary.
Fellow prop forwards Ben Flower, Joe Greenwood and Romain Navarrete all head to new pastures, and it’s probably fair to speculate that at least one of them would have been retained on the Wigan register if coach Adrian Lam could have anticipated George Burgess’ failure to recover from injury.