I think this stuff about Briers not applying himself is overstated. Look at the length of time he played the game, and he wasn't injured that much - other than that half season when he broke his wrist and Appo had his golden run filling in at 6, I can't remember Briers having long layoffs. If he'd been as indisciplined off the field as the legend had it he would never have survived like that in SL.
I think Briers suffered from a lack of good guidance around him for a long time. I sometimes watch back Wire games I'd videoed from the DVDV era. I forgot actually how great the atmosphere was at Wilderspool back then, despite the rocky performances. In some of those games Briers was totally manic. Running about, pointing, arguing with refs, shooting out of the line in defence. If momentum was going against us in a game, you knew he was going to kick out on the full. He lacked the calm presence of mind that Sinfield, Long and McGuire had from a much younger age. The one thing he always had though was the ability to break a line and break a defence, even of good teams. Patton doesn't have that.
Some of that could have been because the younger Briers played in a weak side and was always a big name in our dressing room so maybe people pandered to him a bit and his rough edges were encouraged. If he'd have been in the Bradford or Leeds dressing rooms, he would have had much more mental discipline drilled in to him. I remember I used to think people sucked up to Briers too much. You'd have all those "Briers for Britain" campaigns with people saying we would have beat the Aussies in 2001 if only David Waite had picked Briers and I was like
really? I remember one time one of the trade papers speculated that Warrington were set to lose Briers to one of the big clubs and we wanted to replace him with Dunemann from Halifax, and I hoped it was true.
BUT, there have been many stories of 'wayward talents' at halfback who have faded away, and Briers is the only one, who year by year ironed out his own faults and got to a point where he hit his 30s still in peak shape as a raw talent but with total understanding of the game. Watching him in his 30s was complete halfback masterclass. He had good attacking weapons around him then and he knew how to use them. Compare Briers to the guys who came through around the same time: Harris, Deacon, Pryce, Horne, Cooke, Thorman, even Long, all faded to varying degrees as they entered their 30s. Briers was the only one who got better. [The Leeds guys Sinfield, Burrow, McGuire are in a category of their own, for career-long consistency].
The most interesting comparator to Briers is Harris, who he was signed to replace. They were both outstanding talents, but their careers were like mirror images. Harris as a teenager and early 20s dominated Super League, Man of Steel, great leader and so on, then he became less effective as he aged. Briers dominated SL in his 30s. Now who had more talent out of those two? If you saw Harris coming through in his early days with us you'd say he was a once-in-a-generation talent, and with the attitude to match. Nobody ever said "if only he had applied himself more" about Harris, he was the model professional. He had all the cool calm presence and leadership of Sinfield and so on. But the game moved on and left Harris behind. For all his great attitude, he wasn't able to adapt with the way defences changed during the 2000s. Briers adapted with the game and thrived. He cut some things out of his game like the long cut out ball and keeping trying for the interception and instead of just bombing a fullback hoping for a mistake he became a ruthlessly accurate target finder of the winger making an attacking jump, first with Fa'afili (before TS was on the scene), then King, Hicks and Monaghan. Harris on the other hand was still floating along the line looking for gaps that weren't there, throwing his long floaty pass that said "pick me". When we sold Harris for £375k and signed Briers for £65k or whatever it was, we would have seen that as deal of the century if we'd have known how their careers turned out.
A couple of final points on the Goulding and Long comprisons made in posts above. Goulding fits the story of "could have been a great if he'd applied himself" that people often give to Briers. Goulding sabotaged his own career with his off field behaviour which is why he spent the latter years of his career being pushed about teams at the bottom end of the table rather than being the best halfback in the league and winning Challenge Cups like Briers. Out of these three players though, Goulding was the most limited because he was basically just a kicking player. Long...an interesting story of a player who got in to trouble off the field but, like Briers, was able to adapt with the game. The younger Long had more calm focus than the younger Briers which is why he was more successful for a long time, although I did think he declined towards the end and at Hull he was a shadow of the player he used to be. In terms of raw talent, I think Briers had a bit more to his game compared to the post-injury Long, but the younger Long (pre-2001) had more because he had genuine pace. The young Long, had a bit of Jonathan Davies about him, in that he had a disciplined kicking game but also had the speed to go through a gap and then accelerate away to leave the chasers for dead rather than getting hauled down by a cover tackler. After he came back from injury he was never express pace any more, which was a shame.
