Quote: Slugger McBatt "Wasn't it a spear tackle from a Featherstone player that made him lose his bottle? That's my recollection.
And what about Karl Pratt? Played for Great Britain against New Zealand at Ewood Park, cost us the game with some dropped bombs, and then disappeared.'"
To be fair to Karl Pratt he had an alright career. He signed for Bradford and won the double the year after that Ewood Park game (his nemesis that day, was the hat-trick scoring Henry Fa'afili who later played for Warrington).
As for John Gallagher, he was rated the world's best RU player in 1990 and so when Leeds signed him that was a massive coup - league was very ambitious back then, in a few weeks league clubs signed Gallagher, Ridge, Schuster and Botica out of that All Blacks team that was on a record winning streak. Because Gallagher is actually English born he was talked of as a potential GB fullback when he signed. He got spear tackled at Saints, Phil Veivers and Tea Ropati picked him up and dropped him on his neck. Veivers broke his leg that same game if I remember. But I think its a myth that Gallagher 'lost his bottle' after that. IMO the problem with Gallagher was he just wasn't suited to league. I like RU as well as RL and Gallagher was a great player in Test RU but it has to be said he benefited from playing in a dominant All Black team. His strength was that he was a great runner with the ball in his hands, he could slice a defence open from fullback, but he was not a big bloke, he had a slight build and he was not great in defence. With the All Blacks he didn't need to be, he rarely made any tackles, but he did in league.
Also he was a very laid back character. Matthew Ridge who was his understudy in union was much more physical and an intense character - and was far more successful in league. It's a bit like Nick Farr-Jones was the Wallabies scrum-half, a fags and beer and charmer type character, whose understudy was the super intense Ricky Stuart. Farr-Jones was a great player in union but I doubt he would have come close to Stuart in league. What really happened with Gallagher was that Dougie Laughton took over as Leeds coach and didn't rate him, didn't think his defence was up to it and he disappeared from the team.
A lot of league fans like to slag Gallagher off but I could never understand that. He always came over as a good bloke, and he was very enthusiastic and positive about rugby league. He was rated the no.1 player in union when he signed for Leeds but even after things went wrong in Leeds, I remember him giving interviews saying he had no regrets about the decision to play RL, he talked the game up, he didn't bitch or whinge about the fact Dougie Laughton played him in the reserves in front of 10 men on freezing nights. He's a headmaster now at a school in London, there was something in the London papers about him during the RU world cup a few weeks back, he keeps a low profile and most of the parents and kids in his school don't know he was a professional sportsman, then he went to NZ to watch some world cup matches and he got treated like sporting royalty there because of his All Blacks achievements.
I think in the end he wasn't cut out for league and maybe he wasn't a driven enough character to toughen up physically to the intensity, he was languid and laid back and not a league guy. But credit to him for handling it all with dignity and I've never heard him show anything other than enthusiasm and respect for league as a sport.
