I know Henare's landlord
He's told me a couple of stories, over the years
No surprises that he never got to appear on University Challenge.
Not the brightest.

Bloody enjoyed watching him play, though.

1998 - Adam Doyle, enough said.

As someone who has watched plenty of non-SL rugby, I remember Henare signing for Carlisle in the mid-90's.

I can still remember to this day, the breaking of Dorahy's resignation.

I remember being round at a mate's (and reader of these pages) house, on Easter Saturday night, before we hit town. He'd put CEEFAX on, and it was headline news. Quote from Murphy "John's done the decent thing"

Pity Murphy didn't, too.He hung around for a while (iirc). Even when DVDV got here.


The signing of Briers was good, but, apart from Sculthorpe, he had journeymen to deal with.

Again (iirc), wasn't Sculthorpe hauled over to RLHQ due to his nasty streak. He'd got sent off s couple of times, and the refs got a bit peed off with him being constantly in their ears, whinging. A match made in Heaven, for Stains, then.

Funnily enough I'm just watching the 97 home game v Oldham on fb.

John Duffy (16) just got stretchered off the field with a broken leg, therefore paving the way for us spending 65 thousand pounds midweek....

I nearly mentioned henare's fall from grace, but they scoring wise he was still ok, but I thought his head went cos vagana was here and he became the darling of the terraces that year.

He was brought in to replace Harris, even though he'd never played 6 in his life, ended up playing fb for most of the year iirc.

We did bring Swann and dermot back, dont think dermot got on the field but willie ended up covering 9 for most of the season after we tried every bleeder else.

The other slight positive of that year, converting finau from centre to prop, and the big hits and fends he used to put on.

Then we cleaned out Andy Duncan at the Broncos with a terrible high tackle, only for warrington to sign Duncan on loan for a month a few weeks later. Classic warrington

The Briers signing as Harris' replacement was seismic in the club's history. Whilst it felt like a kick in the guts to lose Harris at the time, surely nobody looks back now and thinks we would have been better keeping Harris. I think Harris was always going to go to Welsh RU and even playing at Leeds at a club that gave him everything - success, captaincy, let him play where he wanted - couldn't keep him. We got 17 seasons out of Briers.

Through all that chaos early in 1997 - two events would coincide to have huge repercussions for us: Harris "stand-off" with the club (ho ho), and Bobbie Goulding clothes lining Neil Cowie and getting banned for those Challenge Cup games that allowed Briers to emerge in the Saints team, only to get ditched in favour of Goulding for the Cup final against Bradford which opened up his availability to us.

I remember Briers in 97 being very skinny for a RL player, lightweight in defence, and he seemed a bit jerky and skittish when he had the ball. I wasn't convinced he was going to really make it back then, but you could see he had a full repertoire of talent from the start - he ran well, he had a long pass similar to Harris and he had good short and long range kicks. Also he was never afraid to try things. I've not seen anything close to that from any of the young halfbacks we've had since.

Was there a mass brawl one day against Bradford when Henare was playing for us? It might have been this year or the season before. I remember Glen Tomlinson being involved, and I think it was on the other side of the field to Henare, but rather than bother running across to join in, he just started a new fight with one of the Bradford players near him. Have I got that right?

I can still picture myself one Sunday morning in early May '96, reading the News of the World, and Harris' life plan" was in print, before me. I thought [iYou cheeky ####[/i. We've nurtured him since becoming a teenager. He's had Johnny Davies mentoring him, a fine (iirc) salary for a kid, and he says [iI can see myself playing for other clubs, and definitely for Welsh RU [/i, and he hadn't even reached his 20th birthday. Cheers.

Maybe we were just the wrong club for Harris at that time (May 96). Dorahy had been fired by Wigan, despite him winning the Double. Rumour has it, the Wigan players hated him. That, coupled with Murphy and his dictatorial reputation, Harris sewed the seeds in that interview. He then threw every kind of strop, to find his way out of Wilderspool.... Playing 5 a side (when he was told not to), sayng (in print, to journalists) that he didn't want to play full back, but then did for Leeds, and other incidents.

C'est la vie. We got a decent transfer fee, and as sally says, 17 seasons out of Briers. Not too bad. It just sticks in the mouth, the way it was orchestrated.
Oh, and his book's as boring as ####, too.

Yep, i remember that too. For all his lunacy, henare was great entertainment!

Yes, I agree. Remember also this was the era of the start of summer rugby, and silly money was in the game. The best young players, like Harris, were suddenly getting contracts that were bigger than even the greats had had in the past. It contributed to a shift in the balance of power away from club bosses and towards players which meant that the dictatorial penny-pinching approach of the club board in the past wasn't going to wash. Only about 18 months earlier, they'd tried to re-sign Allan Bateman by slashing his wages by a third and telling him to give up his job in the pathology lab and go full time, then Cronulla Sharks offered to triple his wages, and suddenly, Warrington offered to match it, and Bateman told them to stick it! I expect as Harris was one of Bateman's Wales team mates, he'd heard Bateman's complaints about how he'd been treated so stuff like that, plus seeing the chaotic way the club was developing after losing Davies, Bateman, Mackey and Brian Johnson, probably made him think I'm good enough to have options, why would I stay here....?

But also, he seemed to always have this thing for Welsh RU, and its fair enough, it's his life. I think the single biggest difference between Harris and Briers, was that as RL evolved, defences got better and he got older, Harris became less effective, but Briers evolved to become more effective in the modern game.

I remember hearing one interesting story a few years back about the Harris transfer to Leeds, that Warrington pushed very hard to get Kevin Sinfield as part of the deal as he had a burgeoning schoolboy reputation, but Leeds wouldn't have it, so we got Danny Sculthorpe as part of the deal instead.

Jon Dorahy seemed to fall out with people wherever he went - hadn't there been problems when he was at Halifax, and then his season at Wigan (where us and Bradford finished level on points with them) was the one point in their dominant run where they seemed vulnerable. Seemed like Edwards and Bell were running the team by the end of his spell there.

Also bringing Alex Murphy back wasn't a good move by us, he seemed like a relic from another era by then. He had respect from being a great player but he was already a bit of a caricature from his time as a commentator. I moan now about KF saying cringey stuff to the media but Murphy was on a different level. Remember him saying "there's gunna be no more excuses now I'm here"...."no money will be spent on second raters"....and most of the signings we made during his time were absolute tosh! Then there was that fans forum when someone asked him what actually was his role at the club and what did he do and he said "b0 ll0cks"



After Murphy left, we did at least regain a bit of stability under DVDV till his last season.

Going at yours paragraph for paragraph, sally
Very true about young players and money. I remember Jon Roper turning up for games in a new convertible. Hardly Beckhamesque, but it must've put noses out of joint.
Harris Briers comparison is fair. When he did return from 3 point, he'd lost more pace, but was still very "savvy", though.
Didn't know about the Sinfield possibility, but he too would've wasted his time, here.
I heard the stories about Dorahy, and that Bell and Edwards were in charge of everything from training to picking the side, such was the players dislike of him. How this didn't filter down into our club's hierarchy about his reputation, I'll never know. We should've dodged that bullet.
Murphy just treated us as a final payday, trying to relive old glories, but the game had evolved countless times, since his coaching hayday. Iirc, when DVDV came, he was pushed to a glorified [imeet and greet man [/i role on match days, but keeping his salary. More foolishness from us. Did he end up going to Leigh, for YET ANOTHER final payday?

As a club we were a total basket case for years. I only started to think things were heading in the right direction when Cullen arrived and our level of signings went up a notch (or 10). Still regret that Cull didn’t get to lead us to a final of some sort.

Yes this was probably the low point for us as a disorganised club.

I remember feeling really frustrated at this time, because it felt like an opportunity was being missed. Finally the Wigan dominance was ended and other clubs were having a shot, and we weren't the ones taking advantage. Only 3 years before, us and Bradford had finished joint top with Wigan on points, then we each lost our key player (Davies for us and Newlove for Bradford) but Bradford embraced summer rugby in a way we hadn't - their crowds were booming and they romped through the league this season. By the time they'd clinched the championship they had won every game in the league season to that point. Saints had also taken advantage of the end of Wigan's dominance and won a SL title and two CCs by this point. Then other teams were rapidly improving around us - Leeds, Cas, London Broncos.

If we'd have had better club management and coaching, and held on to Davies, Bateman and Mackey and looked to add new players around the core of the young crop Harris, Scully, Roper, Penny, Hilton, Wainwright and Knott, we could have been right in the mix. Imagine if we'd been the ones to sign Newlove instead of Saints. We could have moved Davies to fullback and played Newlove and Bateman in the centres; Harris at stand-off, Mackey at scrum-half.

The league wasn't a high standard at this time - the arrival of summer rugby had coincided with the retirement of a number of former greats and the quality nosedived. Bradford walked the league this year but in comparison to the Bradford teams that would emerge later this was not a special side at all. They had the Aussie Graeme Bradley as captain who had a hilarious "everybody hates me, I don't care" attitude. He used to have a column in one of the trade papers and every week he would use it to slag off refs, opposition players. He would have loved the modern Twitter era. I think after Bradford wrapped up this title they signed Shaun Edwards from Wigan and it was seen as the final big signal that the balance of power had shifted from Wigan to Bradford. I remember thinking....I wonder how Shaun is going to get on with Graeme Bradley...and sure enough, Edwards lasted about half a season then he was off to London.

The standards of our league were really shown up in the World Club Championship when English clubs got ritually smashed by the Aussies. Auckland Warriors - who were bottom of the table in Aus put 60 on Bradford, who had won every game over here, and one of their players (think it may have been Matthew Ridge) said "Bradford aren't even in our league". Summed it all up.

Peter Higham's tenure as chairman, along with his fellow directors were different gravy to Simon Moran was able to bring to our club. 2003 was a watershed year, as the HJS was built and we had a new man at the helm The corner had been well and truly turned on and off the field.

To be fair to Higham, I think he'd gone by this point (97, if not, at the end of the 95 Centenary season, after the Currier debacle), and we had the faceless John Smith in charge.
Higham was superb for our club. He wasn't a sacking chairman (although Johnson stayed too long), and he always backed his coaches with money. Look at his outlays

Boyd
Tamat
Jackson
Gregory (A)
Davidson
Roach
Blake twice
Drummond

Then the Welsh experiment
Bateman
Ellis
Phillips
Jones??
Davies

... then the youth policy of
Penny
Harris
Roper
Wainwright
Hilton
Scuthorpe

Topped with other big signings of Maloney and Maguire

For me, Higham's only booboos were the fore mentioned Currier, and messing round Mackey's contract, after we won our first 8 games and the LCC. We went from top, to battling it out for 8th place, by the time the Premiership came around in April 90.

Simple fact is, Higham was merely a local businessman (as were the majority of professional sports club's chairmen, at the time, even football). Years later, and a lot more money, chairmen have to be super savvy. e.g. Moran.

Ahhh, the WCC of 97 (shudders). I've tried to eradicate that from my memory. Tosh crowds, and our clubs were roundly humiliated.
Locally, Danny Farrar (Penrith's second or even third choice hooker) made himself look like a Superstar, compared to our dross. The only bit of "entertainment" from our games, was the hilarious streaker, making the security staff/coppers look like a bunch of muppets. Pity the streaker was a fella, though.

But, bad luck always turns up again, and was proved with the end of season Test Series v the Ausies. We'll NEVER have a better opportunity to beat them, AND WE BLEW IT. Half (if not more) of their stars were missing, because of the Australian ARL/Super League split. Typical

Yes I remember Danny Farrar in that game being good and then being pleased that we signed him. Sid Domic also played for Penrith that day.

We came up against a few future Wire signings in the WCC. Nikau for Cronulla; Logan and Anthony Swann for Auckland.

The WCC was a disappointment because the English teams weren't competitive enough, but one thing that was good was that because this was an era before there was as much TV (or internet) coverage of the Aussie game, it was like the football World Cup used to be before everyone had Championship Manager. You could turn on a game and see teams and players you didn't know anything about and you'd see some talent emerging that you hadn't heard of. There were teams like Perth Western Reds and Hunter Mariners. I remember seeing Brett Kimmorley play for Hunter and thinking he looked awesome. He'd emerged in the same youth system as the Johns brothers at Newcastle Knights and would have been stuck as an understudy but when the ARL signed up the Knights and SL created Hunter as a rival team in the Newcastle region they signed him and he was a star. Think he played for Aus SL team in that end of season Test series when Toovey and Johns were ineligible for being ARL players.

Andrew Dunemann at NQ Cowboys was another who I remember seeing for the first time there - another young kid who looked superb. It brought home how much of a production line of talent there was in Aus compared to over here.

Also, despite the games not being competitive, it gave a reason for English fans to do a mid-season tour to Aus. I didn't go myself but had a couple of friends and later work colleagues who had done it and had unforgettable experiences doing roadtrips based around watching WCC games.

97
We were god awful.

03 was a great chance as well with the injuries they had and we lost 3-0 all in the last 5-10 minutes

From memory, Higham left late 1998, and Smith followed not very long afterwards.

https://www.warringtonguardian.co.uk/ne ... -the-fans/

https://www.warringtonguardian.co.uk/ne ... -the-fans/

Interesting article there.



I remember going to a fans forum one time when Paul Darbyshire was talking about this, around the time we'd set up the scholarship and squadbuilder and that stuff. I think someone had asked why we were successful in the 90s at developing young talent, citing those names above, and he said it was basically a scattergun approach of throwing money in front of parents and lots of kids who were never going to be close to making it took huge cheques from the club.

I had hoped to hear a story about how we once had a great scouting network that dug out Harris and Scully but it sounds like it was just chuck money at enough kids and you might get lucky once or twice.

Well for sure Higham was/is a millionaire. I’ve been out front of his very large house on the hill. During our glamour period of Davis...it wasn’t just Higham, we had a board of punchers and Peter Greenall.
Greenhall sold out his business and stopped his backing pretty soon after.