Quote: Wires71 "I understand your point SC but I can only think you never saw Phil Blake, Woods, Mark Reports, Boyd, Tamati et al play. They aren't remembered fondly because it was 30 years ago, they are remembered because it was awesome at the time to be following Wire.'"
Yes and I remember the era when we had Mackey, Davies and Bateman; I remember when we had Langer and Kohe-Love; or the Paul Cullen era with Martin Gleeson and Nat Wood, we played some awesome rugby in those days with some great atmospheres on the terraces, much better than it is today. We also had a lot of dire games where we lost to lower table teams and it killed off our chances of winning anything, just like the team of the later part of the 1980s did.
Maybe we are all loyal to the teams of our childhood which is why the younger generation today get called happy clappers. I am a happy clapper for the team of the turn of the 1990s which is why I probably overrate Gary Mercer, Paul Cullen and Kelly Shelford compared to what they really were. I still believe Cullen was shafted by the powers that be because of his disciplinary record when he should have been a GB player.
If you went back 30 years now and applied the same standards of critique to the team of the late 1980s that you do to the current one, what would you have said? In 1986/87 we came 3rd and beat Wigan home and away, the only losses they had all season. We signed Woods and Drummond who were two of the best players in the league at that point. The next four years we went 6th, 11th, 8th and 9th and the only trophies we won were the Lancashire Cup and Regal Trophy. Surely with the players we had on our roster that was serious underachievement, worse than anything we've had under TS and Price where we've done everything but win the Grand Final, with an inferior set of players.
I get the argument that Wigan were full-time and had that advantage, and could understand if we finished 2nd repeatedly, but we were well off the pace.
This isn't me trying to denigrate great players from the past, I know they were great players. I'm saying if we apply the same level of critical standard to the teams of our youth that we do to the current team it puts some perspective on the situation today. Also I'm interested in hearing the take of those who were around back then too. My guess is that we had a window of opportunity around 1986/87 where we were on the verge of being a really special side and something went wrong with our decision making (86/87 was after Andy Gregory left so it can't all be that).