Yeah...right PMSL!
3 seasons running, playing for a mid table side with the smallest pack in the league he played 81 Superleague games and scored 64 tries.
1st year at Wigan he played 25 games and scored 15 tries and I believe was your second top try scorer that year, so no problem handling pressure at all..........

the following year he was made the scapegoat for Wigans pi55 poor form.

The only club where Dennis Moran is not applauded and held in high regard is Wigan and that's because he was an easy target.

Mmmm...do you see a trend developing

And next season when Tomkins gets dropped like a hot spud for failing to live up to the hype.

I would agree with this post, standards are equalising not falling

....except that I would rate Edwards higher than that. He developed his game to be much more than a support player.
Clarke v Westerman I agree......but Clarke made better use of his skills by having a ruthless attitude to training and winning.

The one thing that Edwards and Clarke had in common (and I knew Phil Clarke at college and played a couple of times with him) is an absolute dedication to their game and personal development... in my mind, alongside the likes of Mike Gregory they were the first generation in this country to be completely professional in attitude and approach. I fully respect that

What a load of nonsense.

Standards haven't fallen and the cap is working. I used to think this and that the game was more skilful in the old days. I will agree that it was better to watch. Then I realised I was watching tapes of Widnes in their heyday. I was watching the top of the table clashes. Also if you look at these games the defences are all over the place, meaning there were far more gaps to score from.

Full-time professionalism has changed the game. The way the game is played has completely changed and resulted in this impression that it is less skilful. It is played at a completely different pace now and requires different skills. The Great Britain of today would totally dominate the Great Britain of 20 years ago and that's not just down to full-time professionalism. They wouldn't be able to cope with the speed or fitness levels and would be ineffective against must better organised defences.

The other thing that has affected matters is Union going pro. Even if we didn't have a salary cap they would still poach our best players. They aren't just going for money but for profile and media attention. Then of course there are the players that we aren't getting from defections. Even players like Sean Edwards came from Union at a young age.

The salary cap is evening out the competition. Some people like to make out like Saints and Leeds still dominate the league but nowhere like the same way as they used to. Saints were outclassed against Huddersfield on Sunday in a way that wouldn't have happened 5 years ago.

It is clearly better for the game and we need to stick with it.

@ Dunbar and Maximus Decimus.

Just a pity you couldn't sign him within the salary cap.

Comparing the 2009 GB team with, say, the 1970 GB team, can never be anything more than an entertaining argument, but out of fairness, imagine

Dutton
Smith, Hynes, Myler, Atkinson
Shoebottom, Hepworth
Hartley, Fisher, Watson
Thompson, Laughton
Reilly

with the same full time training, conditioning and backup that the 2009 team have. I was brought up around the likes of these players: from a very early age they played many hours a week, and sometimes many hours a day, of touch and pass rugby, where the focus was to work a gap in the defence with footwork, passing, timing and deception skills. They were hard lads from a hard past, playing rugby at a time when almost every lad in their town played, and competition for advancement was enormous. They had to be good to stand out. The best of them were filtered through challenging junior and open age amateur leagues to reach club level. They could all pass accurately, catch anything within reach, and tackle their opposite number by themselves, if needed - if they couldn't, they simply did not get very far. The 1970 GB team would not have been as big as the 2009 team, but would, I suggest, match or surpass them in most other areas.
Whether the spectacle on show was inferior or not, is a different issue, mostly a matter of personal taste.
(By the way, I have no idea of the 13 from 2009 who would have to face the GB team that lost to Australia in the 1970 World Cup final: anyone feel like suggesting a line up?)

Apologies for drifting away from the main point of the thread.

It wasn't that signing that took us over the salary cap.

I did the same thing (ESPN Classic?) and, to take it further, the standard was terrible. Both offensively and defensively. Neither team playing that day would even hold down a place in SL, let alone compete internationally.

Wally Lewis was the only player who really looked like he would have done a decent job were he playing now. Having said that, the wingers, particularly Offiah and Gill, would probably be just about as good as what we've got now. The rest were well below in pretty much every area you could name. The skillsets were terrible, with almost every pass thrown from standing and most being either inaccurate or slow. Ball retention was also pretty poor and the defences were a shambles. Add in the lack of fitness and general lack of athleticism, and it didn't make for a very high standard game (by modern standards, at least).