errr yeah

Not forgetting the wasp

I'm sure he was under financial constraints, but to me he just never understood how to construct a squad. It was always first 17 and a few kids, you say he gave youth a chance, I don't think what was choice or that was his philosophy it was just the unbalanced nature of the squad. It never appeared to have been a thought out approach to me, like you get now. I get the impression TS knows what he expects from every member of the squad and how/when they'll figure during the season, what they'll bring relative to earnings etc.

Our first 17 under DVDV was always competitve, hence we used to give the big teams a run for their money, but we could never rotate and there was no fear of losing your place etc which couldn't have been healthy. We always looked demotivated for the 'smaller games'.

He clearly had good contacts in Australia, bringing over the Gee's, Langer, Nutley etc of this world. Problem with this was that they must have took a chunk of his spend, and it was never a balanced squad. I know folk tell us on here what all of our current players earn, but in reality, I reckon the squad would be pretty fairly balanced salary wise, groups of players earning similar money based on relative standing within the team etc.

I liked him, he liked rugby to be played the right way. He perhaps should have achieved a little more at Warrington, when we had that Langer, Briers, Nikau triangle, off field events didn't help him but I think we should have been top 4 then.

I think that's spot on JWP, the stuff about our squad being unbalanced especially applies after 1999, but I can understand where DVDV was coming from. I remember hearing an interview with him where he said he had a limited budget and wanted to focus on quality rather than quantity and would make up the numbers by promoting lads from the Academy, it was under Darryl that we reset up the U21s and to be fair very quickly we got some decent players coming through in that first Academy team which Paul Darbyshire coached - it got to the Academy grand final, we had Noone, Sibbit, Wood, Highton, Gleeson and Hulse coming through plus Maden who was seen as a big prospect but never made it, Alstead was another for whom there were high hopes but he didn't make it.

When Darryl said that I remember thinking this is just more of the same, Alex Murphy had said when he took over as Director of Rugby "no money will be wasted on second raters, we will only sign real top talent", and then promptly filled the squad with a load of second raters from the south sea islands. So I was sceptical of Darryl but he signed Hunte and Simon Gillies and then Langer, Gee and Nikau...yes the rest of the squad was heavily reliant on young players and that meant we couldn't be as consistent as the top sides and we were a 6th/7th type team, but what was the alternative? In those days we had a limited budget so we could have assembled a bigger squad of "OK" players and been like Cas or Gateshead/Hull, finished around the same place in the table but not excited the fans so much.

It's been easier in the Cullen and Tony Smith era because they have had more choice, they can be selective about which young players to bring through so they don't need to try so many and have weak links. They can also sign some top players and pad the squad out with decent squad players, which Darryl couldn't do.

As an attacking side we were always good to watch in DVDV's later years, Toa and Hunte had their critics but those two were both fast and dangerous and scored a lot of tries.

I loved Toa at right centre in those early years. I remember him once stepping a player after the pass had been made but before he had caught the ball. I would have put him at right centre when we re-signed him ahead of Gleeson. I would have been wrong to do so but I would have still done it.

I remember Toa ripping Renoufs head off twice at wigan, he was always a shocking tackler.

That added to his charm.
In a sadistic sort of way, I miss us being an inconsistant side. We were capable of some brilliant moments back then, but usually we were uninterested and very average.
Made you appreciate them flashes of brilliance even more. That is why Toa is elevated in my eyes. Now we are consistently performing to a high standard, all the brilliant moments kind of just blend together a bit. I wouldn't change it and go back to how we were but it was one hell of a rollercoaster back then.

Just with a lot more downs than there were ups.

2001, DVDVs last season, was the biggest roller coaster of them all, still out of all my seasons as a Wire fan I can remember that one the best, I think also that was the only season when I pretty much went to every home and away game, it was addictive that year.

I found the inconsistency of the DVDV years more watchable than the inconsistency of the Cullen years, because under Darryl it was always like we were a mid table side that somewhere had a team who could beat anybody locked inside it, and you occasionally saw it, under Cullen especially the later years we had a side that should have been a top team, every year we would start off thinking "this could be our year for trophies" and you would get the sickening realisation about a quarter of the way into the season that we were no better than we were the year before. Plus our fans were always bitching at each other under the Cullen years, it was split between the cynics and the optimists who kept bringing up the injury list.

I think the Wire fans were better vocally between 98-02

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.