Quote: Jukesays "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'"
Sorenson was a great signing, seemingly from nowhere. Only for him to move on, as you say, after a relatively short stint. Then there was a Bill Francis, a regular international, who also got transferred just when we really needed him.
The board got blamed by the fans for most of these mistakes, and in my opinion, quite rightly, though I imagine there was a huge cashflow problem too. Crowds weren't great in the 70s, especially not after the 50s and 60s (and were much smaller than today, for example), and there was no merchandising operation worth talking about. I'm not sure what the TV money amounted to back then, but we only made rare appearances on the telly. And of course we made even rarer appearances in Cup finals in the 70s, even though there were many more to choose from than now.
The constant chop and change of coaches was bewildering and could hardly have helped. Vince Karalius was seen as a good appointment, but stories were rife that he didn't get on with the players at all. There was also a players' strike at Wigan some time around then. I'm not sure what the circs were, but the feeling was that it totally poisoned the atmosphere at the club. We also brought in Kel Coslett, who was something of a legend, but supposedly - and I don't know if this is true or not - on his very first day, he told the team that he wasn't interested in the job and was only there until a vacancy came up at Saints. Unsurprisingly, it was during his tenure that we got relegated.
So, it was problem upon problem. But it all boils down to mismanagement in the end. The CEO and his sidekicks must always take responsibility in my book. Even the appointment of George Fairbairn as player-coach was an error for me. This was a guy who would run his blood to water for Wigan. Even in our relegation season, he won the Man of Steel, and in his first year as player-coach, he got us promoted back to the top flight, but it was plainly too much for him, as we weren't really impressive even in the 2nd Division (though strangely, our attendances went up - shades of 2006!). But when they inevitably replaced George as coach, he asked for a transfer and we lost the one true star we had left.
Compared to all this, the Gang of Four were an enormous breath of fresh air. We weren't noticeably better for the first half of the 80s, but the atmosphere at the club was much more positive. We made better quality signings than we had done for years - Gill, Stephenson, Whitfield, West etc - and were constantly after Dougie Laughton as coach, though getting Alex Murphy was a coup, because while he might be seen as a dinosaur today, he knew how to win trophies and subsequently secured the Regal Trophy for us and got us back to Wembley for the first time in a decade. The rest is history of course. We lost at Wembley in 84, but never really looked back after that.
Sorry, History Time over. But the lesson I take from all this is that, when people complain about the club's management today (in my opinion, having decided that the once-in-a-lifetime era of the early 90s should be the benchmark), they honestly don't know what they're talking about. We've been there or thereabouts since 2006, regularly appearing in finals and taking our share of silverware. Not as good as during the late 80s / early 90s, but a world away from the 1970s, which was a genuine period of very poor, short-sighted management at Wigan RL.