WIGAN FEAR
Bateman: When I first met the boss.. I was shaking and I couldn’t speak
JOHN BATEMAN was so nervous the first time he met Wigan coach Shaun Wane that he couldn’t speak.
Bateman, then still a teenager, was one of the hottest properties in rugby league at the time and being chased by a host of top clubs.
But within a matter of minutes of listening to Wane’s vision for him with the Warriors, his mind was made up.
Now tomorrow’s Grand Final showdown with Warrington is the final Wigan game for both player and coach, before Bateman heads to Canberra and Wane starts a new job at Scotland RU.
Bateman told Mirror Sport: “He’ll be the first person to tell you that when we sat down together for the first time in my agent’s office, I couldn’t speak I was that nervous.
“To be sat in front of Shaun Wane, who had just won the double the year before, I was shaking.
“I was sat there as an 18 or 19-year-old kid with Shaun Wane telling me he wanted me to sign for a massive club like Wigan.
“I thought, ‘How am I going to improve this team?’
“But that first day as soon as he sat there with me and told me what he wanted, what we could do together, my mind was made up and here we are now.
“Wigan as a club is massive and to have even interest was amazing.
“But after speaking to Waney I think I just stopped talking to all other clubs and more or less knew I’d sign.
“I could sit and ramble all night about him.
“On the field he gives you the tools to be a better player, but it’s what he does for you as a person that I’d take most from him.
“He made me into such a better bloke with the little stuff he instils in you and I can’t thank him enough.”
One way to do that would be to help inspire Wigan to Grand Final glory in Wane’s last match in charge.
Bateman admitted: “It’s a weird feeling.
“You want the fairytale ending, but you think there’s always something that will crop up and you won’t get it.
“There’s not much left now, 80 minutes in front of us and a good team in Warrington to stop.
“But it all comes down to us and how much we want it.
“If we turn up and play then it will be down to us.”