Home-grown produce has Wigan feasting at Super League's top table

It took the appointment of an Australian coach to fire Wigan to their best Super League season for a decade, but the club's chairman, Ian Lenagan, takes at least as much pride from the growing local influence on the team's success. Lenagan went out on a limb when he dumped the former Bradford and Great Britain coach Brian Noble at the end of last season – after Wigan had narrowly failed to reach the Grand Final for the third consecutive year – and replaced him with Michael Maguire, a low-profile assistant with the Melbourne Storm. Few would quibble with that decision now. If they beat Huddersfield tonight for a 21st win in 25 games this season, the Warriors would be guaranteed to finish top of the table for the first time in a decade. Maguire's influence has been immense, combining the cutting-edge knowledge he had picked up in five years working under Craig Bellamy at Melbourne with the formidable work ethic for which the expansion club remains renowned, irrespective of the salary cap scandal that has engulfed them this season. But the former maths teacher is surrounded by Wiganers, as Lenagan points out. "We did our homework on Michael," said the former theatre producer and lifelong Wigan fan who bought a majority shareholding in the club from Dave Whelan two years ago. "He had done seven years' apprenticeship in coaching, and just as importantly, he knew what he wanted, and that was the Wigan job. His brother lives over here and his wife has done in the past, and the first thing they did as soon as they arrived was bought a house which sent the right message straight away. "But he would be the first to say that there is much more behind the success we have had this season. Shaun Wane, who we promoted to be Michael's assistant and have high hopes of for the future, is Wigan through and through, and the same goes for Kris Radlinski, who represents so many of the good things for which this club has been renowned. The other key appointment was Mark Bitcon, our strength and conditioning coach, who I think is a remarkable story in himself. We picked him up from rugby union in Scotland, but he is a Wigan guy – one of three products of St John Fisher high school who are at the very top of their field, along with Craig White who works with the Welsh Rugby Union, and Paul Stridgeon who has joined the England union set-up this year. Mark has worked wonders with our players." A reassuring majority of those players – including the gifted Tomkins brothers, Sam and Joel – have come through the town's amateur clubs, still the most prolific junior nursery in British rugby league despite a decade in which the professional club has played second fiddle to St Helens, and faced competition from a Premier League football team. "We are heading in the right direction, but we know we have won nothing yet," Lenagan said. "Huddersfield are a very dangerous team, and even if we do finish top there will still be a hard road to Old Trafford for the Grand Final. In many ways we are ahead of schedule, because I always thought it would take three years to get where we wanted to be, but Michael has taken us there more quickly than I expected." After a single Challenge Cup win in the last decade, nobody in Wigan is complaining about that.