Has it ever occurred to you that there were plenty of average players turning out for the cherry and white?



Sully was a good attacking winger who had as many limitations to his game as any current international winger. He was poor under the high ball (he had nervous hands in general), wasn't a great defender and was useless at taking the workload off his forwards.



He was rubbish. I remember him playing in the World Cup under Larder where he was a bloody embarrassment. The Aussies dropped better scrum halves from their reserves.



Alan TAIT? You mean the Alain Tait who couldn't tackle - THAT Alan Tait? He might have been good going forward but he was hopeless at the bare minimum standard - last ditch defence. Only in a competition so poor could he be a 'Great' player.



Do me a favour. That list is a who's who of mediocrity.

The 2008 squad that was thrashed in Melbourne does not compare to the one that beat the Aussies in 1992.
Best Wingman 1992 Offiah, 2008 Gardner
Halves in 92 Edwards, Gregory & Schofoeld. 08 Pryce, McGuire & Burrow.
Those are massive drops in quality of players.
As for the 13s 92 we had Clarke & Hanley, 08 Sinfield & Purham.
Hanley to Sinfield isn't a drop in stanards its falling off a cliff.

We do not have the quality players now that we used to have prior to SL and the SC. There are many reasons standards have dropped. Mainly management reasons. The RFL are useless.

If that were true, you could say the same thing about a certain Shaun Edwards. After all, he played in Wigan teams dotted with superstar players, in a league in which most of the teams were mediocre or worse, did very little at International level and played just one game for Balmain (I think) during his time for them.

In the all conquering 2006 season (arguably the most dominant team in Saints' history) Wellens was voted:

Man of Steel
Super League players' player of the year
Rugby league writers' player of the year

The following season, he was voted

Lance Todd winner
St Helens club's player of the year

All of these awards were won because he was the best performer out of all the talented Saints players that surrounded him. But obviously he only won these awards because he was surrounded with all the talented Saints players.

I have replied to that point elsewhere.



And the fact that you are defending players who you claimed "not to have seen much of" or "can't remember" is just laughable.



Whichever way you cut it, time will show that Wellens will go down as one of Saints legends.



They are totally different players with totally different skill sets. Both are/were top class full-backs and their collective and individual awards place them in the same bracket.



I'm not dreading the four nations at all. England *should* walk all over the other three nations. True, we do have a lack of quality backs at the moment, particularly in the three quarters but up front we can match the Aussies. That has always been GB/England problem though, hasn't it? We can never quite get a side that has enough quality in every position to challenge the Aussies - years ago it was the forwards who let us down, now it is the backs!

That's game, set and match methinks.

Your spot on!


He won all of those playing against a declining standard of RL Player!

If it hadn't declined he wouldn't have got anywhere Near any of them!

So do I. You can go now and take the rest of the KR crowd with you.

You summed it up lovely in the last sentence, thank you.

It's true, he was the best of all the players because all the other players were better than him

Wellens is good but still one of the most overated players ever. Briscoe has been better for 2 years now and should of been playing for England and GB.

Briscoe is average and isn't an international class player in a million years.

He is the best we have.

He is at the moment, hence he's been picked for England.

So your first point was irrelevant, if you don't think he is international class thats fine but he is the best we have so he must play.

Laughable? Ok, so when Saints fans rubbish the successful 1996 squad it isn't laughable but when I make the obvious point that such a successful squad is unlikely to largely consist of rubbish players, and in doing so make the honest and unsurprising admission that I can't remember all of the detail of Saints squad, I'm the one being laughable? You and your fellow pro-CC posters have argued yourselves into some utterly bizarre positions on this thread. You really couldn't make it up.



Players are legends for all kinds of reasons. There's a debate gone on recently on this board about whether Barrett is a Wigan legend. A number of people argued that he wasn't, despite the fact that he is an immensely talented player (I await a reply from you trying to argue Wellens is as good as Barrett

). Wellens' success and his professionalism and great service to the club will undoubtedly make him a Saints legend. That doesn't mean he's the equal of Jonathan Davies, one of the greats of British RL history, not merely a Widnes legend.



Oh dear. Just admit you were wrong. You pro-CC people don't seem to be able to concede any points at all, even when its glaringly obvious that you're wrong.

Jonathan Davies was a far better player than Wellens has ever been or will ever be. That is no insult to Wellens. Davies is one of the greatest British RL players of the last few decades. It was a privilege to watch him play.



You think we will "walk all over" NZ and the Aussies?





Are you serious?



Surely this is a wind up?

I'm going to end up with a 10 page sig at this rate!

Agreed.

Yet another sign of the decline in standards.

But he hasn't been the best for 2 years.

The 80s (moving into the 90s) produced four genuine world class Aussie beaters: Hanley, Offiah, Schofield & Ward. That's it.

How many have the 00s produced?

Peacock, Burgess, Morley, Sculthorpe.

I'd include Fielden if his form hadn't flat-lined.

When did Burgess beat Australia?

Well he did only play one game, if you ignore the other 11, plus 4 substitute appearances.

Your lack of attention to detail is as alarming as Wellen's lack of ability.

He was outstanding against NZ, who today are around the same level as Australia.

The point is - this notion that the 80s and 90s were packed full of rugby talent is purely fanciful. For a start, we didn't beat the Aussies in a single test series. We couldn't beat them at the very start of SL when they only had half a team (with arguably their best players absent!). The truth is - during this period GB survived on the backs of a handful of outstanding players - Offiah, Hanley, Schofield and Ward. Without them we would have been trounced even harder. I mean, how can anyone think teams containing the likes of Deryck Fox, Paul Eastwood, Graeme Hallas, Karl Fairbank, Paul Loughlin, David Plange, Paul Hulme, Peter Williams, Chris Bibb etc. were an outstanding advert for player development is beyond me.

And as for the stupid argument that the scores were closer between GB & Aus - of course they were. A) The Aussies weren't as professional as they are now and B) we were playing under the 5 metre rule.

So, players can now be called "Aussie beaters" after they have beaten New Zealand?

C'mon, Burgess has a long way to go before he can even be mentioned in the same breath as some of those others.