And I played under ken gwilliam as well.

I know he gave the reason. My response was specific to the poster I was responding to, who seemed to be saying that Connolly's tale was one of him being hard done to.

However, he had already chosen to go to Australia in the off season and was contemplating a career with them. That doesn't sound like someone who was sure about playing for Saints.

I wasn't following Saints when he was playing so I don't know what the rest of the team were like. Were they all rubbish and Connolly our only good player?

I was around when Ken Gwill and Alan Swift took over the coaching of the 1st team.

He was contemplating joining them as Saints didnt want to pay the rate for a quality player which even at that young age he was.

Saints were the only team that could really get close to Wigan back then,there were some quality players but there were also some very average ones to.

Two good coaches and worked well together.

But he offered to stay at Saints for a smaller pay rise than was offered. Given the stick he received for years afterwards, I'd say he was hard done to.

This also is a myth,the transfer fee for GC didnt buy us Newlove at all,We sold GC at the end of the 92/93 season we signed Newlove in Nov 95 and as far as im aware the move was funded by person who went on to be a director and the inclusion of 3 players in the package.

Well I remember it all well and a family member of mine is good mates with Gary, he was sold and told to leave. He was on a crap contract at Saints and Wigan offered him a good deal. So in short if the best team in the country (maybe even the world at the time) offered you alot more money and your current club said sod off we dont want you what would you do?

We had a decent team but selling him left a big gap. Newlove replaced Loughlin not Connolly.

As an alternative: if you thought you were worth more than your club was able or willing to pay, and the club with the best team in the country offered to pay you way more than the club you were with could ever afford, why stay with your hometown club? After all, you get to play with the best players of the time, get to win trophies, get to earn more than most players dream of. He certainly didn't come across as hating his time at Wigan!

He just sounded like someone who wanted to be elsewhere. It happens. We've got Jammer and Eastmond now.

But thats just it he DIDNT want to be elsewhere his hand was forced by the tightwads that ran the club at the time.

I feel that we are just going to go around and around with this one now.

Read into it what you will

Well, he wasn't forced into going to Canterbury but he wanted to go.

Still, as you suggest, we're going round in circles.

Lots of players in that era went to Australia on short term contracts. The reason Connolly contemplated going there full time was that Saints WOULDN'T offer him a decent contract. Had he gone to Australia then Saints wouldn't have got a penny for him. Saints wouldn't give him the deal he wanted (much less that Wigan offered him) and decided to cash in.

Didn't Steve Prescott say something similar about the Saints board not wanting to reward local players?

What hasn't been mentioned is that Saints were in very poor financial state at that time and the £250 K was a big fee for them.

honestly at times you arnt half thick. Were not going round in circles it's simple HE DIDNT WANT TO GO TO WIGAN BUT SAINTS FORCED HIM OUT. All the idiots who called him Judas should have been having a go at the board. As you stated you didnt watch Saints at the time so take it from someone who did the board we had then were short sighed and sold Gary to make a quick buck and thought they could replace him on the cheap .. they failed and we went backwards.

As he said in his interview all he really wanted to do back then was play for Saints and get paid a fair wage (obvious he wanted to stay as he offered to stay at Saints for less!!!!!). When presented with only 1 option (no bosman ruling back then) what could he do ? Retire?

De railing the thread a bit here but when you look back at the last time we were really close to the Aussies most of the GB team played off season down under.When the Mal Reilly episode was shown it struck me how many of that GB team had spent time in oz and how close we got to actually beating them.

yep, loads of top players went for spells over there. It helped them develop and I think it helped them mature a bit too. Have you read Chris Joint's book? IIRC he talks abit about it.