Re: Matty smith joins Wigan - Official : Mon Jul 09, 2012 11:51 am  

Wigan Peer wrote:

So, correct me if i'm wrong, you think Saints are capable, this season, of doing a double or treble as they have done in the recent past?

The double might be a bit tricky now But we've as good a chance of winning the Grand Final at this stage of the season as we have had at the same point in pretty much any previous SL season bar 2006 most certainly. And that's just plain sad given how many glaring holes and deficiencies we have at the moment, but it is the truth and speaks volumes for how **** the rest of the league is.

Re: Matty smith joins Wigan - Official : Mon Jul 09, 2012 11:52 am  

Bigredwarrior wrote:

Saints are well behind the standard of the Long, KC, Sculthorpe days. You could put this argument to any club. At the start of the season, all clubs have a chance of competing for silverware. The fact is its years since you won any!

But in comparative terms we're.... Oh sod it... Just go bang your head against a wall for me and come back when you get it - saves me a job...

Re: Matty smith joins Wigan - Official : Mon Jul 09, 2012 11:55 am  

Northampton_Saint wrote:

No.... The basis for the argument that the league is crap is that... well frankly, the league is crap...

A simple question: you look at your current squad and ask yourself how many of them would be good enough to have played for Wigan 10/15/20 years ago. (And that's from one of the stronger squads in the league right now). How many current GB players would have been good enough to get in a GB squad from 10/15/20 years ago?

Exactly.

If you want to know how weak the league is: Matty Smith is the best available half the biggest club in the league could find to build their team around for the next few seasons, Richie Myler is probably the other best young half in the country right now, and we have to make do with some raw kid and a clapped-out old antipodean fullback/hooker pulling the strings and are still stronger at #6 and #7 than most other clubs in SL.

Now look me in the eye and tell me the league in general and the quality of British players in particular are as strong as they've ever been. I dare you.

calm down dear.

humour me a minute, but at any point in your life when you were growing up, did your dad/anyone else feed you a 'they're not as good as they used to be' line, to describe anything from food to beer to music to sports players to politicians to cars to films etc etc? this seems to be exactly what you're doing.

There, you humoured me, now I'll humour you. The Wigan team of ten years ago was far from a great team. In fact, the Wigan team of 15 years ago was also far from a great team (yes they won a SL) but I'd be thinking more than twice before naming the likes of florimo, moore, reber, cassidy (as a hooker), goldspink, tony smith, holgate, mark smith, jon clarke ahead of any of our starting team now. we've had great individuals such as faz, rads, connolly, paul, newton, renouf, robinson, dallas etc but as a team I think this one is more rounded. thats just my opinion.

Now if you'd like to go back 20 years (not sure if saints fans go back that far???? ya know, before sl...) then yeah we are entering the territory of that wigan team and that national team (mostly wigans team) were the business. However, the 20 years since (when according to your theory it was never as good) never stopped you lot from crowing about how super the wooper dooper saints team were, and bragging about back to back this that and the other? And when we turned sides out at your place to get a good stuffing we didnt turn round and say, well actually, all of rl is crap...we went home, had a beer, kicked the dog and got on with it.

The problem with your theory is that there's always someone older who will take you even further back to a time when, shock horror, we beat the aussies. They will scoff at names like hanley, edwards, gregory x2 etc and say its a sign of the times when we have to have an organiser (edwards) as a gb half back when we used to have the real deal (murphy) or we are stuck with a quick man who cant tackle on the wing (offiah) when we had the blockbuster himself (boston)

the point is using individual player comparisons to back up your theory doesnt work. matty smith isnt as good as trent barrett (i wish) but this wigan team would stick some serious points on that millward side.

Re: Matty smith joins Wigan - Official : Mon Jul 09, 2012 11:57 am  

Northampton_Saint wrote:

...and, naturally, you're completely missing the point... Noone's arguing fitness and organisation is better now - that has nothing to do with the point...

The point is that basic player quality is in steep decline in SL right now and that is incontrovertible fact.

You go kid yourself that Matty Smith is the next Sean Long, Charnley is the reincarnation of Robinson, Carmont would have graced any RL team ever etc. etc. if you like. Personally I'll just live in the real world and get fed up that Saints' current squad, despite being a hollow shell of it was 5/10 years ago in any vague measure of quality, is still in real terms at about the same level of competitiveness. That simple fact says all that needs saying.

Interesting way to prove 'incontrovertible fact' by citing and laughing at things I never said.

For what it's worth, I actually agree with you that, overall, standards are dropping - for various reasons - but they had dropped in the era you're talking about compared to the earlier era of Hanley, Lydon, Gregory etc. Yet funnily enough, we didn't get too many complaints from St Helens fans about that.

Re: Matty smith joins Wigan - Official : Mon Jul 09, 2012 11:57 am  

pk wrote:

:lol: calm down dear.

humour me a minute, but at any point in your life when you were growing up, did your dad/anyone else feed you a 'they're not as good as they used to be' line, to describe anything from food to beer to music to sports players to politicians to cars to films etc etc? this seems to be exactly what you're doing.

There, you humoured me, now I'll humour you. The Wigan team of ten years ago was far from a great team. In fact, the Wigan team of 15 years ago was also far from a great team (yes they won a SL) but I'd be thinking more than twice before naming the likes of florimo, moore, reber, cassidy (as a hooker), goldspink, tony smith, holgate, mark smith, jon clarke ahead of any of our starting team now. we've had great individuals such as faz, rads, connolly, paul, newton, renouf, robinson, dallas etc but as a team I think this one is more rounded. thats just my opinion.

Now if you'd like to go back 20 years (not sure if saints fans go back that far???? ya know, before sl...) then yeah we are entering the territory of that wigan team and that national team (mostly wigans team) were the business. However, the 20 years since (when according to your theory it was never as good) never stopped you lot from crowing about how super the wooper dooper saints team were, and bragging about back to back this that and the other? And when we turned sides out at your place to get a good stuffing we didnt turn round and say, well actually, all of rl is crap...we went home, had a beer, kicked the dog and got on with it.

The problem with your theory is that there's always someone older who will take you even further back to a time when, shock horror, we beat the aussies. They will scoff at names like hanley, edwards, gregory x2 etc and say its a sign of the times when we have to have an organiser (edwards) as a gb half back when we used to have the real deal (murphy) or we are stuck with a quick man who cant tackle on the wing (offiah) when we had the blockbuster himself (boston)

the point is using individual player comparisons to back up your theory doesnt work. matty smith isnt as good as trent barrett (i wish) but this wigan team would stick some serious points on that millward side.

Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be

Re: Matty smith joins Wigan - Official : Mon Jul 09, 2012 11:59 am  

Northampton_Saint wrote:

Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be

yes it is. its definitely better now than 20 years ago.

Re: Matty smith joins Wigan - Official : Mon Jul 09, 2012 12:02 pm  

Northampton_Saint wrote:

There's a big difference - there are many, many brilliant individual football players still being produced all around the world and many of the current Spain squad would have walked into that Brazil team on basic talent and ability with or without current fitness levels. The difference in SL is that the brilliant, exciting individual players produced in the British game of 10/20 years just simply aren't there any more, and fitness and organisation is no substitute...

You are trying to state as FACT, and argument that is as old as time itself. All sport, and life changes, and to compare one generation against another is just silly. Maybe with todays fitness levels past footballers, rugby players, snooker players, tennis players would have been able to compete with their modern conterparts. But its a very difficult thing to prove, or base an argument on. Many past footballers, rugby players and tennis players would have just been too small, and lacking in power. Steve Davis once said of younger players "They have spent their lives watching hours of snooker on the TV to see have to compose breaks", this was not a complaint, just an observation. He only had one frame a week of top players on Pot Black.

I think our present team, with its greater fitness and organisation would beat our great team of Hanley, Edwards Et al, but it would not be pretty, and nowhere near as entertaining as those games were back then. If you watch those old games of rugby, or football, players had lots of time on the ball, and lots of space. They would not get that now. Whether they would have the mythical skill to excape these situations with there old levels of fitness, thats doubtful. there is great skill in the game today, you just happen to be watching the wrong team.

But to imply as you do, that things are cut and dried is just silly.

Re: Matty smith joins Wigan - Official : Mon Jul 09, 2012 12:03 pm  

I dont think Smith did anything outstanding but he didnt let us down either... He could be a very vital part of our run in in the league.

Re: Matty smith joins Wigan - Official : Mon Jul 09, 2012 12:07 pm  

Mr.Side wrote:

I dont think Smith did anything outstanding but he didnt let us down either... He could be a very vital part of our run in in the league.

Agreed, which is all we could have expected, for his first game in with little training time. i thought he fitted in admirably.

Re: Matty smith joins Wigan - Official : Mon Jul 09, 2012 1:05 pm  

Matty Smith improved at Salford, under Longy's coaching, and will improve further at Wigan.
AFS's (Andrew's) point about investment is the key and most clubs are doing it.
Wigan have a vast pool of talent to draw from due to the amount of RL played in the town and surrounding areas.
Other clubs are trying really hard too. Trouble is most can't keep their young scholarship talent if the predetory big clubs come after their best players.
The Wakey/Fev/Cas/Normanton area is full of talent but many of their younger players are at Leeds, Hull, Hudds with the odd one at Wigan and Wire. Therefore those clubs struggle for talent and under the present rules and always will.
There has to be a limit on how many younger players a club can take from outside its own service area. It used to be one but that seems to have gone.
Until lower end clubs can retain their own talent then we will have the league as it is now and matters won't improve.
As for better quality players yesterday rather than now, yes of course we had.
From 1895 and for 100 years we took the Rugby Union players we wanted.
Following 1995 that supply of quality players dried up.
We then brought over NRL players many of whom added real quality to clubs and the league. That supply is about to dry up.
So when we compare the players in SL now to previously maybe we can only compare so long as we discount former Union and NRL men.