Inspired by this post from Cat on the RD thread, I thought it might be worth taking the chat on to a separate thread...

Some of my memories....

The licorice allsorts approach to signing players (endemic throughout the Murphy era, despite him saying at the start "no more money will be wasted on second raters"icon_wink.gif. Felt like there was a constant merry go-round of ageing veterans and unknown NZ/South Sea Islanders. I think everybody was trying to mine that market at the time hoping to unearth the next Henry/Robbie Paul.

Didn't we go crawling back to Swann, Dermott and Mafi a few weeks after making a big show of sacking them after getting smashed by Bradford, because we needed bodies for the squad?

Chucking Jon Duffy and Warren Stevens in to the first team. I think they were only 17. Both were clearly too young, I wonder if it harmed them long term. There was a lot of hope around Duffy at the club as a potential successor to Harris.

Nigel Vagana. One success from the licorice allsorts approach. You could see he was streets ahead of the others - such a smooth runner with great hands. I hoped we could hold on to him and Toa (who had flashed briefly at this point but kept getting injured) but was clearly too good for us. I remember him being a stand off for us, but can't remember whether this was just in a few games or all season?

The Wigan win. There was a rule of thumb back then that 90% of the time we were utter garbage, but when we were at a point of maximum chaos and at home against a good team, we would pull off something spectacular. I remember 'calling' a few Wire upsets in advance using this rule over the next few years, though sadly never confident enough to put money on them! I think this was the week when Dorahy had just been sacked and Cullen who was still in the playing staff was put in charge as coach, although after we won, it became "Murphy was in charge with Cullen".

The demise of Richard Henare. He had been the Nigel Vagana of the year before, and there was a lot of excitement going in to the season about how he would do. It soon became clear that this was a guy with issues and his form went downhill before him being sacked for disciplinary reasons. For a while I saw him as the great lost hope, but he never got out of the Championship after that.

As if the Corona virus wasn't tipping us over the edge, up pops 1997.

You think that was bad? Wait till 1998. At least chaos gave us some excitement.

It was like being glad to have seen the back of 2001.

At least we had Michael Eagar .

Didn't we also get that plant pot from Saints, Fogarty?
The only thing he did after leaving there, was get out-acted by a sheep in Emmerdale

He rose to greater heights than that....he was in Snatch getting knocked out by Brad Pitt.

Anyway, we're getting off topic. Eagar and Fogarty were just a twinkle in DVDVs eye, back in 97 when we had Vagana and Dallas Mead.

97 was also the end of the road for the last stalwarts of the Brian Johnson era. Cullen called it a day and Kelly Shelford was released. I remember Shelford - who was one of the heroes of my teenage days - copping a lot of stick towards the end, but his reputation seems to have been rehabilitated since given how he is revered on this forum.

Chips & mayonnaise with a side of very young ladies were his downfall.

Well you brought 98 up.......wink
I was glad for 98. I looked forward to Fogarty, when he first ran out for us. Didn't last long
Eagar was the shining light in another drab year

All taken back to his flat just off Irwell Road.

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.