Agreed, which is all we could have expected, for his first game in with little training time. i thought he fitted in admirably.

Matty Smith improved at Salford, under Longy's coaching, and will improve further at Wigan.
AFS's (Andrew's) point about investment is the key and most clubs are doing it.
Wigan have a vast pool of talent to draw from due to the amount of RL played in the town and surrounding areas.
Other clubs are trying really hard too. Trouble is most can't keep their young scholarship talent if the predetory big clubs come after their best players.
The Wakey/Fev/Cas/Normanton area is full of talent but many of their younger players are at Leeds, Hull, Hudds with the odd one at Wigan and Wire. Therefore those clubs struggle for talent and under the present rules and always will.
There has to be a limit on how many younger players a club can take from outside its own service area. It used to be one but that seems to have gone.
Until lower end clubs can retain their own talent then we will have the league as it is now and matters won't improve.
As for better quality players yesterday rather than now, yes of course we had.
From 1895 and for 100 years we took the Rugby Union players we wanted.
Following 1995 that supply of quality players dried up.
We then brought over NRL players many of whom added real quality to clubs and the league. That supply is about to dry up.
So when we compare the players in SL now to previously maybe we can only compare so long as we discount former Union and NRL men.

calm down dear.

humour me a minute, but at any point in your life when you were growing up, did your dad/anyone else feed you a 'they're not as good as they used to be' line, to describe anything from food to beer to music to sports players to politicians to cars to films etc etc? this seems to be exactly what you're doing.

There, you humoured me, now I'll humour you. The Wigan team of ten years ago was far from a great team. In fact, the Wigan team of 15 years ago was also far from a great team (yes they won a SL) but I'd be thinking more than twice before naming the likes of florimo, moore, reber, cassidy (as a hooker), goldspink, tony smith, holgate, mark smith, jon clarke ahead of any of our starting team now. we've had great individuals such as faz, rads, connolly, paul, newton, renouf, robinson, dallas etc but as a team I think this one is more rounded. thats just my opinion.

Now if you'd like to go back 20 years (not sure if saints fans go back that far???? ya know, before sl...) then yeah we are entering the territory of that wigan team and that national team (mostly wigans team) were the business. However, the 20 years since (when according to your theory it was never as good) never stopped you lot from crowing about how super the wooper dooper saints team were, and bragging about back to back this that and the other? And when we turned sides out at your place to get a good stuffing we didnt turn round and say, well actually, all of rl is crap...we went home, had a beer, kicked the dog and got on with it.

The problem with your theory is that there's always someone older who will take you even further back to a time when, shock horror, we beat the aussies. They will scoff at names like hanley, edwards, gregory x2 etc and say its a sign of the times when we have to have an organiser (edwards) as a gb half back when we used to have the real deal (murphy) or we are stuck with a quick man who cant tackle on the wing (offiah) when we had the blockbuster himself (boston)

the point is using individual player comparisons to back up your theory doesnt work. matty smith isnt as good as trent barrett (i wish) but this wigan team would stick some serious points on that millward side.


Great post!!!!!

thinking about northampton saints post again, if we accept his/her post that rugby league has been steadily getting worse in the last 20 years would it be fair to say that saints have only ever really been a great side when rl was rubbish?

Yes! This! Haha

That must be another one of his/her 'incontrovertible facts'.

I thought there was no Rugby League before 1996 ?

I know from my foray a few weeks ago on the Saints board that you lot have very little respect for George. You're actually much nearer the truth with that comment (minus the sarcasm) than with the rubbish spouted by Saints fans about one of the great SL era centres.

The facts: despite missing a few games this season Carmont has still scored more tries than any Saints players and sits at no. 7 in the try scoring table. He's averaging a try a game. Not bad for a guy that's probably going to retire at the end of the season and who, according to you deluded scousers, was never very good anyway.

He's now running into top class form (watch the highlights of the Wakey game and weep!) just as we approach the business end of the season. It looks like the Indian summer of Carmont's career has a fair bit of life left in it still. Great news for us. Terrible news for the rest of SL.

2006 was not a vintage year..... The 2006 Saints side was a great side and to be fair to them any team can only beat what's in front of them, it wasn't their fault, but the standard of SL was truly awful that season and it's difficult to judge just how great a team that was given the lack of competition.

I don't think everything in the garden is rosy, but it's madness to say the quality of SL now is lower than the mid-noughties.

Ask Ryan atkins whos the best centre in the league ...George Carmont

Carmont is an above average centre in a league of mediocrity - compared to what's out there at the moment he is indeed class and one of the best 3 or 4 centres playing in the league. He's certainly a cut above what he have available at #3 and #4 at the moment. Compared to top championship winning centres of the past he's simply above average however. He'd never have worn a Wigan, Bradford or Saints shirt 10/15 years ago most certainly.

And it says everything about the state of the competition yet again that a clapped out old NRL never-was [iis[/i one of the best centres in the league...

...and as for trying to compare him to Newlove as some numpty did on the Saints board...