Quote: shambawangy "Agreed, but on the flip side the forwards and the bench is better than the current squad'"
Correct
And there are three players - Farrell, Cunningham and Sculthorpe who were significantly better than anyone playing today (other than Tomkins).
Sculthorpe out of position was better than any 6 we've currently got (as was Farrell when he played stand-off) and in recent years we've been playing foreigners to try to strengthen the side.
I don't think that 2002 side was very representative though of where standards used to be.
If you look at the 2003 Ashes series, it was a 3-0 whitewash but GB were much more competitive than they are today and who knows what might have happened if Morley hadn't got himself sent off in that first test. (As an aside, Farrell was immense that day and anyone that says he never proved himself at international level needs to sit down and watch that game. One hit he put in on Webcke - during which he stole the ball - will live long in my memory, partly because an Aussie sitting behind me had just been forecasting that Webcke was going to smash the GB pack single handed. I heard barely a peep out of him for the rest of the game.)
This was the 2003 side, from the first test
Radlinski (Wigan); Carney (Wigan), Connolly (Leeds), Senior (Leeds), Horne (Hull); Sculthorpe (St Helens), Long (St Helens); Fielden (Bradford), Newton (Wigan), Morley (Sydney Roosters), Peacock (Bradford), Farrell (Wigan, capt), Forshaw (Bradford). Subs: Anderson (Bradford), McDermott (Leeds), Deacon (Bradford), Gilmour (Bradford).
