The comebacks at Wilderspool, like the Bradford at home one, which was against a very good Bradford side live long in the memory. We were on our day, unbelievable. What Langer did to Bradford that day was class.

Loved that Briers/Nikau runaround.

Chris Campbell made Penny look the size of Inglis.

There was just no planning at the club, nobody was signed with tomorrow in mind, it was all for today. We never brought people in that we could build anything around under DVDV, it was all Masella/Mercer style fillers. To give Cull his due, he built something solid, even some of his recruitment that doesn't get much credit like the fee for Bridge, getting Grix etc, some good spots. Yes, different financial contraints, sure, but I always felt with Cullen he was trying to build something, just somewhere along the line he got distracted. For me, that was partly because he wanted to emulate Saints, I thought he got a little obsessed with 'X-Factor' rugby without it dawning that you can only do that on the back of your defence.

I think during the Daryl days the planning was more long term (at junior level) than medium term, so he focused on the short term to try to get the first team competitive in the meantime and get some names in to capture some interest which was important with the stadium big in mind.

I agree Cullen had a plan for the future and he kept talking about "loading from the top" as well, bringing in established big guns, Gleeson, Rauhihi, Reardon, Johnson, V Anderson, Morley, King, Monaghan, on top of the younger players being brought through and then bringing in some younger players like Bridge, Grose and L Anderson. I thought Cullen's general ambitions and plans for the club were spot on, he seemed to work well with Simon Moran, he was very effective at selling the vision of the club to new players. I just think Cullen was limited as a coach in a few ways. He was not a top defensive coach like Tony Smith (neither was Daryl), which is ironic because as a player Cullen was a formidable defender. But also I thought Cullen's personality worked against him, and the fact he cared so much about the club, he was a bit of a control freak wanting to do everything and he was prone to letting emotion take control of him and lose his temper. Tony Smith has a reputation as a strict disciplinarian but the image he projects - to the outside world at least - is a man completely in control of everything, who is invariably polite with the media. Cullen was a great talker to the media when things were going well, but when things were going badly he came over snappy and tetchy which TS never does, and he used to lose his rag over small things. I also think as a coach, Cullen didn't have the advantage of serving a long apprenticeship under a top coach, he seemed very eager to get going and get hands on experience, and he made sure he was the head man and didn't bring experienced coaches onto the staff to get some fresh ideas.

I reckon these few characteristics counted against PC in the end, when you see him talk about the game on Sky, he's the best analyst by far and he obviously has the tactical nous to know rugby league inside out so you think he could have been a great coach, as it was he was OK but not in the top category, but you could never change him, PC was PC the same fierce intense full on character that played for us.

Let's not forget, either, that Wire could well have won the 2001 Challenge Cup semi-final under DVDV. We were actually on top against the Bulls early in the second half, Nikau had a try disallowed for offside ( the ref did not even go upstairs for the video ref's input ) which clearly wasn't offside. On such small things do events hang sometimes. The final against Saints would have been very difficult but I remember one of the senior accounts staff at Wire telling me that not getting to the final (never mind winning it) had cost us £200,000, which would have been a huge boost to the impoverished coffers of the Wire back then.

i dont know how true it is, but i know someone who was involved with the club at the time and they tell me that DVDV was actually putting in his own money into the club at one point we were that skint. Apparently DVDV was quite a wealthy man with some successful businesses in Aus, and dug deep to keep us going, including stumping up players wages out of his own pocket. what ever the faults are that people see in the bloke, he went way beyond his job description if this is true

Yeah that is true, I think it was mentioned in Scully's book, or it might have been Nikau's can't remember now. He made sure players didn't go unpaid when the club had cash flow problems.