Which is more than we've had since. You've also got to factor in how financially unstable the club was towards the end of Johnson's reign, with the subcequent player unrest being a big factor in his departure.

This sorry lot don't realise how good they've got it.

Brian Johnson & Billy Benyon were the only 2 coaches to come anywhere near winning the league.

Barrow should be at number 2. In his era wigan were the only full time team with everybody else part time. We were consistently challenging them in finals for lancashire cups, prienierships, john player etc and when they won romped to a league title only losing 2 games it was us who beat them home and away. Wigan apart, we were the best team in the league under barrow.

Wigan were very dominant during the later parts of the 80's but it took a Warrington player to link their team together. That player was Andy Gregory.
Other players left to go to Wigan : Case - Potter - McGinty. But it was Gregory that was missed the most.
We were left with Paul Bishop. I think if we had kept hold of Gregory we would have won alot more trophies under Johnson.

Johnno struggled in his last season but knew what was going on behind the scenes and fell on his sword. He instructed the players to play one out in our own half, but do what you like in the oppositions. Our defence under Johnno was outstanding in the couple of seasons we had Jiffy and just relied upon him to pull the creative bit out of the bag.

Never forget that game against Sheffield at home in the last game of the season. Wire top of the league.

That Anthony seems to be doing good business with the club. Not sure who we used before him, though?

....Hmmm, Gregory jumped ship for Wigan some 2 years before Johnson became coach??.....It was Tony Barrow who had to continue without him, and did an excellent job of finding his replacement, teaming John Woods with Keith Holden at half back, which, but for terrible luck for Holden, would have been an even better partnership than Edwards/Gregory at Wigan.

Looking at our league positions during this period, as this is probably the best measure of how good a team we were shows some interesting average finishes.

1970/71 Murphy
1971/72 Average finish of 7th, high of 1st

Benyon
1978/79 Average finish of 5th, high of 2nd

Ashcroft
1982/83 Average finish of 7th, high of 3rd

Bowden
1984/85 Average finish of 8th, high of 4th

Barrow
1986/87 Average finish of 5th, high of 3rd

Johnson
1988/89 Average finish of 7th, high of 3rd

Dorahy
1996 Average finish of 5th, high of 5th

Van de Velde
1997 Average finish of 8th, high of 6th

Anderson/Plange
2002 Average finish of 10th, high of 10th

Cullen
2003 Average finish of 6th, high of 4th

I have gone off the dates in the original post, so they may need some tweaking, but it shows that even Murphy only had us finishing an average of 7th (although the 1st place finish in 72/73 surely earns him bonus points).

I have purposely only counted the league and Challenge Cup as they are the two trophies available to all of these coaches.

What I find quite depressing is that no matter who we have had as manager, all with different circumstances, we have never had a period of consistency. Looking at the averages, they are all much of a muchness, but that is where you would factor in the budgets they had etc.

There was only one season where you could say we were the 2nd best team in the league behind Wigan (and that wouldn't be strictly true as we cam 3rd behind Saints, level on points), and that was 1986/87, and then in the following 2 seasons we finished 6th and 11th.

There we are then. We ARE mediocre. Perhaps we should just accept it, and put these delusions of grandeur to bed.

Depressing isn't it? I just don't understand it. Other clubs have been capable of at least a few years of consistency, yet we are up and down like a yo yo, even during some of our supposedly good periods.

One of our most consistent periods was actually under Cullen, however we were consistently average rather than very good then poor.

Maybe that was a little bit over the top, but i don't think it was just about league positions back then as there were several other trophies on offer and wigan always ran away with the league. Aside from winning the premiership, Barrow also took us to a lancashire cup final, a john player final and another premiership final. Although we lost them all to wigan it's still pretty impressive for the amount of time he was coach. I should have phrased it like this, we were wigan's main rivals for honours under barrow.