To pretend that George Williams is a real marquee player is very disingenuous.
I can only assume we awarded him that status in order to keep him out of the hands of Warrington or whichever NRL club was naive enough to allow his agent to persuade them to make a big offer.
He had loads of promise as a lad, but has yet to fulfill it. I agree that most of last season he was only one among many passengers in the Wigan team, and it didn't help him at all that our pack were out-and-out pathetic. But if he doesn't want to disappear into the ranks of the might-have-beens like Gregson and Hampshire appear to have done, he's got to make it happen this year. One area where most top level RL clubs are not wanting is money-mindedness. The salary cap means they MUST get value for money, and there is no way GW is offering that at present - unless he massively improves in 2018, he won't get anything like the offers he seems to think he is worth.
I also don't think we can also discount the World Cup, where a very experienced and astute coach saw no real place for him in the top tier. A controversial decision maybe, but just to dismiss Wayne Bennet's view, when he's been watching and assessing the lad in training would be pretty silly.
2018 will be a big year for George Williams. He really MUST prove that he's the player so many people crack him up to be.
