That ones easy. Saints 1-13 was a million times better

yeah it just wasnt

I always thought the best backline in SL history was Wigan in 2000. Radlinski, Dallas, Connolly, Renouf, Robinson.

Yeah and in 2001 we had Lam and Johns at halfback. Matthew Johns was a very good player who for one reason or another never really got the chance to show his best at Wigan.

Yeah Robinson had gone then which was a big blow but David Hodgson was around then and he had pace as well. That era of SL was quite exciting as defences weren't as good or structured as they are now so you would get a lot more broken play and players scoring from distance. I remember the Wigan v Saints games in the Endacott v Millward era being great entertainment. Even Warrington who were largely crap, were able to stay in games against good teams because Langer and Briers and our pace in the centres meant we kept scoring points.

Another feature of this era was that Bradford had a huge advantage in conditioning over the rest of the league. They had a lot of players that were pedestrian compared to Wigan, Saints or Leeds: I wonder how many games Spruce, Naylor, McAvoy and Brooker would have got in that Wigan back line, but Bradford were ahead in trophies at the time.

The Matty Johns thing was strange, that was a huge signing but from my memory the press and fans were quite cold on him from the start. Some of it was because this was quite a "populist" era in terms of everybody having it in for foreign signings, all the letters that would be written in to League Express were like UKIP/Gary Schofield view of "we should limit it to 1 per team and make clubs give young lads a chance".

I think early on Matty Johns was injured and Phil Jones came in for a game on Sky and got a hat-trick and that set the narrative of "Matty Johns is holding back opportunities from Jones".

he was injured a lot Johns

Says similar in Frank's book I believe

I used to talk regularly to a Newcastle Knights fanatic in Australia around the time and Knights supporters were devastated when Matty Johns left the Knights. I think a lot of people over here were comparing him to his brother which meant whatever he did was never going to be good enough, nobody could come close to Andrew Johns at that time other than Darren Lockyer but Matty Johns was a great player in his own right. You could see with some of his touches that there was a much better player under what we were seeing. I think as has been said, he wasnt 100% fit and i dont think he ever particularly settled here.

Yes the Knights fans are very attached to their home grown players. They were really gutted to lose the semi final to the Roosters in 2000 when they blew a big lead. The script had been written for the Johns brothers to win a second Grand Final together before Matty headed to England. In the event they won it the next year but Matty wasn't there. Brett Kimmorley came through the Knights juniors at the same time as the Johns brothers, they were stacked for halfback talent.

There had been a lot of chopping and changing in the halves in that era for Wigan....Paul/Smith, Florimo/Clinch, Peters/Farrell, Lam/Johns, Lam/O'Neill, it was a different partnership every year and probably didn't help with consistency.

then Orr and Lam, I agree with that

It still blows my mind that this was ever seen as a good idea. Good lord. A lot of the others were great players, we just didn't keep them around long enough (or couldn't, in cases like Willie Peters).

I'll also never really understand why we didn't give Luke Robinson a go and instead ended up with Orr (who was mostly useless as I recall) and Moran in later years. I mean I know one of the stories about why he was let go (re: Pongia) but surely it was more than that?

Orr was good, Robinson was moved on for having a big mouth if I recall, Clinch and Chester was a worse selection

I think Lindsay and then Whelan were struggling to adapt to the SL era and the rise of Bradford and Saints and were acting like those presidents of the galacticos European football teams who like shopping for players and changing coaches in the hope that something works. Halifax had a great season in 1998 and were the team on the rise, so their best players Florimo, Chester and Clinch turn up at Wigan. Orr was the rising star at Cas, so they get him in. Moran was a one-man team in London, so they get him in.

It was a strategy that kept Wigan trapped just below the top tier, they had a rotating door of talented players who came in and out but they didn't have the stable core that Bradford, Saints and Leeds did, other than Farrell, and when he left the foundations caved in rapidly. It was similar to the Sydney Roosters in the 1990s (when Lam was there), they were the 'transit lounge' for big names coming and going then something clicked in the early 2000s when Ricky Stuart was coach and they dominated the NRL for a while.

In the 2010s Wigan had a different approach, much more strategic, no vanity signings, mostly a home grown core and then some signings strategically bought in. Some of these, Blake Green, Matty Smith, were like Clinch in that around the league people thought is this guy really a Wigan calibre player, but they fit the team and what Wane was trying to build.

I remember early in 2004 seeing an interview with Mike Gregory when he was hinting at changing the culture in the direction of the type of thing Wane would later bring in - moving away from big names and big egos towards building the squad around the generation of talent coming through. Obviously tragic events intervened but if that hadn't happened, it would have been interesting to see if Whelan would have had the patience for MGs approach. He soon reverted to type, bringing in Millward and then going on that big recruitment spree for 2006 which completely tanked.

we signed Florimo from Aus, was a rumour all year since Henry Paul said he was going to leave, he went to Fax from us, we signed Clinch and Chester after Fax stuffing us in the season I think they were mid season transfers, thats how desperate we were, Blake Green was awesome

Ah yeah I got Florimo's clubs the wrong way round. In 99 there was a weird level of panic around Wigan and Goodway. I wonder how much of it was affected by the pressure to leave Central Park with another title, it was a strange dynamic with Hanley coaching Saints too.