They were great (Leon Pryce was such a pr!ck - nearly taking Gareth Ellis's head off and crippling his brother simultaneously).

I watched Leeds -Widnes from '89 the other night, The Moriarty elbow game (I was there). That was quick, very solid defence (5m PTB) and aggressive running. I had forgotten why Moriarty was "upset". The first time he carried the ball he got absolutely tw@ed by four Leeds "tacklers". I think Martin Offiah was punched in the face every time he was tackled.

This game always makes me smile when it is mentioned as on the Saturday night before the game I was in the Town Hall Tavern and quite a few of the Leeds players were also in there too,a few of the boys were clearly a bit worse for ware,But non more so than Craig Izzard who was absolutely 5hit faced and could barely walk come 11pm

Fast forward to game day and I met my pals in the South Stand bar and felt confident in telling them that there was no way that Izzard would play as he was probably still p1ssed even now.
Izzard went onto having a storming game and also ted Joe Grima too...How wrong was I?

The Moriarty hit on Hughie was sickening to see and reminded me of the time that Dannatt did the same to Hanley

Izzard was fantastic. Proper forward.

Wish we had a back rower like him now.

I'd be interested to see how we go defensively this year- JJB mentioned in an interview that he's been asked to look at some defensive stuff. He was saying the game has become dominated by wrestle techniques over here following Michael Maguire's success but he was wanting to look at it in a different way and see if there was ways the "old school" contact based defence could make a return.

Watched the Regal Trophy one v Carlisle earlier. Awful...truly awful.

Did we really used to watch rugby like that every week lol.

Goodness me.

Watched the 70-0 against Wigan earlier. Dunneman was such an underrated player.

It's also probably the worst Wigan line up I think I've ever seen.

Agree. First time I've re-watched it, we didn't actually play anything like as well as I'd imagined we had. Wigan really were bad. Didn't they go down 75 0 to Saints only a short time after?

Some really good stuff on Rugby League Cares Facebook site at the moment . Watched 1998 GB v Australia yesterday. The Dave Hadfield ' up and over ' documentary was great too

If it can be proven to be a more successful use of energy to put less players in the tackle, invest less into the wrestle and more into setting your defensive shape early and into line speed and effectiveness at marker that would be a huge step in changing the game again for the better. I hope this may be the thinking

Dunneman was quality, always rated him myself.

Another player I’ve enjoyed watching in the games is Wayne Macdonald, not the best player always had a few too many mistakes in him but entertaining watching such a big bloke running round sometimes like a back

Also great watching Barry Mac in his pomp


What’s also been interesting watching some of these more recent games, theres been players I totally forgot we had signed.

Millard, Mark O’Neil 2 Id totally forgotton about for some reason!

McDonald was so underrated. He was one of those players nobody rated when we signed him, so he passed under the radar during his time here. But he was our best prop in that 03-05 period IMO.

Odd to reply to my own post but I was watching the scrap when Izzard went after Grima and at the end I saw Paul Hulme lying on the deck very, very worse for wear. I spent a few minutes trying to work out what happened to him and then there it was, Steve O'Neill knocking his own player out. Gary Lord had stuck one on O'Neill at the start of the fracas and as things were calming down O'Neill saw Lord come into range and swung one - unfortunately Hulme was stood between them and copped one flush on the chin. I'd never noticed that before. Extremely funny. Wonder if O'Neill owned up afterwards

70 metres through the entire Saints team - best props try ever.