The prop Ben Flower will be thrown straight back into action for Wigan Warriors when his six-month ban expires next month.
The club have had a poor start to the season and Flower has not played a game of rugby league since being sent off two minutes into the Super League Grand Final, when he punched the St Helens half-back, Lance Hohaia. He was then handed the ban, the longest in Super League history, as well as being fined 50% of his wages for six months by Wigan, of which three were suspended in view of his record.
The ban expires in time for the game against Warrington Wolves on Thursday 16 April and the Wigan coach, Shaun Wane, says that with the team far from their best, Flower will be picked as soon as he is available. Wigan, who have won only two of their six matches, usually send players to the Championship side Workington Town on dual registration in a bid to ease them back to full fitness.
“If we’d won every game up until this point it would have been hard to drop my middle men and we could have worked on getting Ben a game somewhere else first,” said Wane, whose side face the bottom club Wakefield on Friday. “As it stands now though, it’s not a hard decision to bring him back into the fray. Ben is on for the Warrington game after Easter, the first one after his ban.
“He’s fit and ready to play. Our fitness team have done an absolutely great job with him. His knee that he had operated on is spot on, and I’m confident that I could throw him straight back in without a problem at all.
“I’ve looked at him in training and he’s ready to go. I wouldn’t have thrown him in straight away had things panned out differently, and it’s definitely dictated the way we’ve approached things with him over the last couple of months.”
Wane said Wigan will turn the corner soon despite their start and has welcomed critics writing off his side only six weeks into the season.
He said: “Everyone is enjoying what’s happening to us at the moment, but we’ll have our turn. I know it’s a good story for people that Wigan are losing games and I know people are enjoying it but they can write us off at their peril. I know the reputation we have as a club and the enjoyment people have to see a club as big as ours struggle. We’ll turn it round though and we’ll prove them wrong.”
