Quote: Cruncher "Steve Davies was seen as a promising young centre who, for some reason, never really fulfilled his potential. Alan Taylor was similar, an exciting young stand-off who Wigan unwisely sold about a year after this final. He then came back to haunt us in at least one match, playing for someone like Barrow IIRC, and ripping us apart.
You're right, that whole team was mismanaged and badly dismantled, but that seems to have been a hallmark of Wigan in the 1970s. It was only a year or so earlier when Wigan sold Eddie Cunningham and Stuart Wright, both of whom would go on to be Great Britain mainstays. I know it's easy to make judgements with hindsight, but both of those lads were clearly sensations-in-waiting, and the fact they went on to Saints and Widnes respectively was equally ridiculous, as those clubs were the dominant powers at the time. To make things worse, Keiron O'Loughlin and, almost unbelievably, Bill Ashurst, would be out the door themselves in another year.
But there was also the incredible business in or around 1978 when John Bevan fell out with Warrington and was offered to Wigan for the measly sum of £20,000 (a steal even then) ... and Wigan said it was too much.
It's no wonder we crashed downhill to relegation not long after this.'"
Thanks for that
Add to that Kurt Sorensen, 15 games and 8 tries.
And interestingly enough I was watching some clips from the Widnes FB pages the other day where they were picking their all time great teams and unsurprisingly Stuart Wright was on one wing (Offiah on the other).
And in the build up to that they discussed the options of each position and at centre Eddie cunningham was in the options with Frank myler, Darren Wright etc. But just missed out to the other 2.
But to think we didn't let Wright and Cunningham go after say 1 season, we let them go after 5/6 years each so we knew how good they were and then they both go on to be top players, GB internationals etc is astonishing, in fact I hadn't realised the both played at Wigan for so long before leaving. I thought they'd only done 1 or 2 yrs and maybe we let them.go before we knew their potential!
So to lose Wright, Cunningham, Sorensen, Ashurst and o'loughlin etc in the space of 2 years and end up were we did is ridiculous
As I mentioned on the OP I was very young so can't really assess or provide an opinion on what happened
Do you think it was purely a Board issue, or do you think the constant revolving door of coaches was a big issue (I appreciate it would be the board who employed and sacked etc, but maybe the coaches got rid of players they didn't want and brought their own players in that didn't work?).
6 coaches in about 7 years after Ashton resigned in 73 can't have helped.
Either way the period from 73 to 81 (which I can only really remember 78 onwards) doesn't appear to be stable in any way.
In the early part of the gang of 4 it seemed similar in that we had 4/5 coaches in 5/6 years, but you always got the feeling each step was a step forward
I've had this discussion many times on here, usually with posters who think Maurice came in and we immediately bought all the best players in the world, we didn't, we had evolution not revolution
We had 3/4/5 scrum halves before we got to Greg
We had 3/4 centres before we ended up with Bell/Iro etc.
We had 3/4 FBs before we got to Hampo
Same in the forwards, we had The Bambers/hodginksons/Campbell before we got to Case etc
Lots of 2nd rowers before West came in then potter and goodway 12months later
Really interesting to hear views of thise who fully experienced the 70s era