Just watched the Bulls home game from 2002 on sky. What a great game, so interesting to watch. Left me wondering a few things
1) Where did it go wrong that season? Ben Walker looked great, defence looked great, Carroll looked good. Remember the season being a bit of a let down
2) Great to see the golden generation making their first steps. Sinfield, Diskin, Jones Buchanan and Burrow all featured, with Ward, Calderwood also involved
3) The game was a great spectacle and full of incident. Much more entertaining than today's sport

Did anyone else watch it?

from memory bulls and wigan were way ahead of us that season. it was transition from Murray and lance to the golden generation. decent mix and good enough to win games but over a season we wernt consistently good.
it was exciting as you say and the quality of overseas payers were a million miles ahead of now.
we have some exciting games but imo the standard is very poor, and getting wotse

We got closer in 2003 but were still way off winning silverware.

We should have won that CC final, and got the GF

We lost to the Bulls 5 times in 2003. The team clearly had something significant missing... More than just Bai and Lauitiiti.

It was nice to put it right in 2004. We still needed JP to really build the dynasty though, from 2007 onwards.

iirc the bulls had boney m on before one game.
they were ace....

Away days at Odsal in the early 2000's were great times, always seemed to be a sunny Saturday evening game.

Kelly Llorena singing before the game was a highlight for me.

The game has been more entertaining to me at least, but higher quality I don't agree with, if you mean ability to win games. A team from 2002 (or several years later, like the 2004 GF) would be utterly flumoxed by the wrestle/winning the ruck. The apparent speed of the game back then was a lot to do with the way tackles were made and the fact defenders by today's standards jumped off a tackled player like scalded cats when the ref called held. The kicking was also generally poor, there were a lot of bad errors in many games and basics like passing are done far more effectively by more players than they were. Go back further to the 90s and defensive lines even in the best Aussie games have massive holes. Before then and lets just say most stars of the history of the game wouldn't make first grade now if they played the same as they did in their pomp.

Also, if you're going to pick games why not the Sts one earlier this year vs probably most games of any season ever?

Like I say, I find past games very entertaining. But scratch the surface and watch bog standard games rather than stand out ones and the entertainment drops off a cliff along with the quality. Older fans will tell you the 60s/70s were the bestest ever. Have a watch of games from back then and imagine how the Leeds Cup winning sides of 77 and 78 would do today....

No doubt the standard is far higher now, defences in particular are a world apart from the 70’s.

But it’s also far more predictable today. First halves can be a very dull grind of 5 drives and a kick.

You can’t turn the clock back and make defences weaker. The other key change is uncontested scrums.

Again not sure you can bring back the contest. A return to the 4 tackle set rule
May encourage more risk taking but probably just more long kicking.

Maybe make it a 12 player game to make more space, don’t know how you make it more enjoyable for the fan, can’t think of an easy answer

A quicker ptb would be a start. No 6 again, just give pens for what are often professional fouls. No 3rd man lying on, adding an extra 5 seconds for defences to get set. Put an end to holding in. Player are more than capable of freeing themselves. We now have the ridiculous situation where the ball carrier tries to cheat his way to a penalty while the tackler takes as long as he can to clear the ruck.
And it seems a bit odd getting all misty eyed about open, attacking play while at the same time bagging our coach for trying to bring about exactly that. He might be sending out the team with one hand tied behind its back sometimes but at least he wants it played the right way. As do Peet and Rowley. If those controlling the refs insisted on reining in some of the arsing about at the ruck, the spectacle could be so much better once the balance was restored from defence back to attack once more.

Couldn’t agree more with this. To be frank, over the last five years I’ve been a bit bored with the game in general. Often the exciting games have been the close wrestle ones rather than anything exciting. Of course that has been exacerbated by the Agar era, but at least Smiths style is more engaging… I just hope for some better consistency!

I’d also say that getting back to allowing quick tap penalties would be a great move. That way you can get rid of the six again rule and allow the team in position to dictate whether to inject pace into the game or not.