Quote: Kingfisher Blue "Very rare that I disagree with you 'Sally' but Wainwright's contribution to most matches was outweighed by the daft mistakes he made, granted Mathers has also been guilty of the odd howler but his overall contribution to most games was positive. The main distinction for me is that Mathers was always very evidently 100% dedicated to the cause, the first to congratulate other players when scoring & always passionate about the game-I've been watching the Wire for 25 years & not seen many as enthusiastic as him, for that alone he deserves all the applause because that sort of attitude should be encouraged'"
I thought Wedge had one bad spell in mid 1999 when he lost confidence and DVDV seemed to lose confidence in him and he knocked on a lot. But when he came back in 2003 he was a far better player and I don't remember him being as error prone second time around. OK Wedge wasn't in the highest class as a player but he was pretty decent second time around, I reckon the Wainwright of 2003-06 would have been worth a squad place today, probably on the bench in the first choice 17.
Mathers was more demonstrative with his back slapping etc and he was obviously a good figure in the dressing room, popular with teammates etc. I always liked Mathers from his loan spell in 2002 and hoped we would sign him one day so I was pleased when he joined us but (and this will be controversial on here) overall I was [islightly[/i disappointed in Mathers, just because of his error count. As a fullback he had more about him than previous Wire fullbacks like Reardon, Penny etc, but his error count was too high to be a quality player, I always felt like there was a howler in Mathers at any time and other teams knew it...I didn't like the fact we had a target in the team. He did have good mental strength though, if he made a cock up he wouldn't go moping or hiding, he still put himself about in the game, so he was more prone to the odd error than a disaster game. But that was why I supported us getting Hodgson, even though Hodgson is older he is a level of class above Mathers. To give Mathers his credit, in the biggest stage (Wembley) he didn't make errors and his defence in the Final last year was match winning.
So overall I thought he was ok for us, maybe I had too high hopes, I thought we were getting potentially the best English fullback in SL, and I dismissed all those bitter Wigan fans saying Bloody Hell Mathers, but when he played for us I saw what they meant. I reckon Briers will attack him this weekend. Remember a game against Cas in the 1990s when Davies got into Graham Steadman.
