Marty Grrrrrrrrrr! wrote:
Pffft......give over. Its a different sport these days to the 80s, 90s and noughties. The players now are different athletes to those days.
The reason there was more room in those days was because players trained in the pub after a game of touch n pass. There was no defensive structures whatsoever, mo idea of wrestling and tackling techniques.
Come on, we can all look back and talk about how amazing past players was, and in their era they was but its a different game now.
You're saying players from the 2000's (which ended 10 years ago) were not as fit as the players today? There is no magic wand waved now to make players "fitter" than they were 10/20 years ago. The game went pretty much full pro back in the mid 90's and full pro when SL started - over 20 years ago. The game today is littered with defensive errors, so much so that attacking play consists of hitting it one up, kicking it and seeing if someone makes a mistake. Nobody offloads and skillful passing is on the wane so defending is easy. I watched the Leeds/Saints league game from '07 last night. It was played at a pace I haven't seen in a SL game for years. The key tries had to be scored by brilliant offloading, support and passing. Defence was outstanding and attack had to be better. A lot of that Leeds team were still playing 10 years later when their legs had gone and were coping perfectly well with the "pace" of the modern game.
My guess is that the training and player development focus shifted to big lumps like we have trudging around today who can do an extra couple of laps in a bleep test rather than those who have genuine pace can pass, kick or read a game.
I hate wrestling by the way.
Did nobody work out that baggy shirts were easy to grab hold of? I think Bradford were the first team to tighten things up as I remember.
