Quote: sergeant pepper "Maybe it was the way I interpreted I, but I took it as Rads seeing Thompson as an upgrade. No disrespect to Thompson, he's been better than I thought he would be, but he's not as good as Smithies.
Wane, for me, has always made some baffling selection decisions. He did it when he was the coach here and he's doing it with England now. As many current/ex Wigan lads he has picked, there are plenty he hasn't too. The treatment of Faz, Knowles over Smithies. Not bringing Marshall in last year etc.'"
That's deffo not how he meant it
Off camera he talked about fighting his agent for months and months before he left
The comment was more in a "When one door closes another one opens" type, and that with Salary cap you can't have both (of course you can if you lose another top player but you know what I mean).
100% they did not want to lose Smithies
As for people not rating him, like anything else in life there will always be people questioning players, questioning the club, criticising someone or other who havent got 1% of the knowledge or skills of the people they're criticising, but there's no-one at the club who didn't rate Smithies as highly as they could.
Smithies and Thompson habe similarities but offer different qualities in certain areas