Quote Deano G="Deano G"I don't think Wigan were totally dominant, at least not until the mid 90s when some teams seem to have given up. Widnes were not a side that any Wigan fan took lightly (!) in the late 80s and Saints were always dangerous - the side they had with Ward in 91 or 92 I think was a very powerful side and pushed Wigan close. Closer still was the season we only won the league on points difference, Wire in particular were very unlucky that year. You had Davies in your side, my favourite non-Wigan player, one of the most naturally gifted rugby players I have ever seen and better than any player currently in your side, or our current side for that matter (with the exception of Tomkins). In the days Widnes were a great side they had class all over the pitch. There were great players at lots of clubs e.g. Schofield at Leeds, whose media persona now tends to overshadow what a great player he was. Leeds were an enigma as they spent huge amounts of money in trying to catch Wigan (and reportedly offering £1m to Will Carling...
) It wasn't just about money, as Leeds showed. Wigan were further ahead in terms of coaching, organisation, fitness and leadership (we had a team full of leaders who seemed to get on despite there being some big egos) but the talent was by no means as concentrated as people make out and our winning margins in big games were often narrower than people now remember. Wigan's champion ethos meant we often seemed to find that extra edge to win big matches but we weren't "totally dominant" until well into the 90s and that period didn't last long.
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I agree with most of this.
Wigan's first league title of that era was in 86/87 when they ran away with it losing only 2 games all year (home and away to Wire
) but then the next few years things were closer. Widnes won the league the next two years, and then Wigan started winning again (when you beat us at Wembley in 1990 you were only winning your second league title at the time, whereas it felt like Wigan had been the top dogs for ages because you were picking up the Challenge Cup every year).
92/93 and 93/94 were titles decided only by points difference. As Deano says it was about Wigan winning games that counted (as in the Cup). 93/94 Wigan were quite out of sorts and really did not have a good season and yet still won the double.
The most dominant Wigan were was 94/95, at this point the rivals were all in a stage of transition and had fallen off the pace and Wigan were probably at their peak (in the post Hanley era), with some great young players coming into the team as well as probably the peak time for the RU recruits. Wigan were well ahead in the Centenary season as well which is why it was a shock how quickly Wigan fell off the pace by two years after that.
As for how strong the rivals were at that time, I agree there were some great players around in those days, but whereas Wigan had class throughout the team, the rivals were too dependent on one or two big guns - Schofield/Hanley at Leeds, Davies at Warrington, Newlove at Bradford. The exception were Widnes when they took a couple of titles in the late 1980s, they were a really good side.
Unfortunately for the game in general, standards took a real nosedive after the Centenary season. A lot of quality players retired, or went back to union/Australia, and the quality of players in the game by the late 1990s was well short of what it had been in the early and mid 1990s.
Wigan nosedived first which is why Saints and Bradford nipped ahead of them, but then the general decline caught up and Wigan's title in 1998 was IMO more a consequence of everyone else slipping too, that Wigan team had some pretty average players in it compared to what had gone before. From around 2000 I think standards started to steadily recover. The Saints and Bradford teams that were dominant in the 2000s were much stronger than the ones that had been winning trophies in the late 1990s.
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