Re: Kyle Eastmond in England RU team today : Tue May 28, 2013 10:17 am  

Northampton_Saint wrote:

Evans was a near unstoppable monster on the half-dozen or so times he managed to make it onto the pitch vaguely in shape during his career. I always said he could have been one of the all-time greats with even a little bit of professionalism and a decent fitness regime. You can have Carrington though - he was pretty much the poster boy for our disastrous signings of the late '80s. We paid out a shedload for him and if memory serves got 3 sub appearances and a disastrous start in a 0-36 home defeat in the Lancashire Cup against Oldham out of him in 2 years before he retired with injury... Meanwhile we turned down David Bishop because we were worried he'd get injured...

Memories... I think all the ankle-biter knee-jerk whiners on here need to go back in time 25 years or so and be made to support Saints then - then they'd see what a club run by unambitious amateur clueless fools actually looked like...

Does that including signing Dave Tanner when we went to watch Mark Preston?

Re: Kyle Eastmond in England RU team today : Tue May 28, 2013 2:45 pm  

And signing Adamson thinking he was his brother. Those were the days. Sad-End would have had 7 or 8 clueless idiots to pick from then.

Re: Kyle Eastmond in England RU team today : Tue May 28, 2013 2:57 pm  

Top Saint wrote:

And signing Adamson thinking he was his brother. Those were the days. Sad-End would have had 7 or 8 clueless idiots to pick from then.

Not to mention Bryan Henare, Ricky Cowan and Mark Bourneville.

Those were the days and one of the only reasons I can smile through our current predicament.

Re: Kyle Eastmond in England RU team today : Tue May 28, 2013 3:00 pm  

Top Saint wrote:

And signing Adamson thinking he was his brother. Those were the days. Sad-End would have had 7 or 8 clueless idiots to pick from then.

That story was nonsense. Phil Adamson was a well known and highly rated ARL player when we signed him. Like Josh Perry, he should have been a good signing. It just didn't work out for whatever reason.

Re: Kyle Eastmond in England RU team today : Tue May 28, 2013 3:08 pm  

Dux wrote:

That story was nonsense. Phil Adamson was a well known and highly rated ARL player when we signed him. Like Josh Perry, he should have been a good signing. It just didn't work out for whatever reason.

A representative was sent to Australia to sign 'Adamson who played for Australia'. We signed Phil when we should have signed Matt. Was a state of Origin rep but still a cock-up.

Re: Kyle Eastmond in England RU team today : Tue May 28, 2013 3:11 pm  

Top Saint wrote:

A representative was sent to Australia to sign 'Adamson who played for Australia'. We signed Phil when we should have signed Matt. Was a state of Origin rep but still a cock-up.

Yeah, I know that's the story. It's just completely implausible. A classic 'made up' rumour that got repeated enough times to become 'true'.

Re: Kyle Eastmond in England RU team today : Tue May 28, 2013 3:27 pm  

Dux wrote:

That story was nonsense. Phil Adamson was a well known and highly rated ARL player when we signed him. Like Josh Perry, he should have been a good signing. It just didn't work out for whatever reason.

There was only one reason Adamson didn't work out - Ellery Hanley.

Adamson was signed before Hanley was announced as coach, so obviously a move by the board. The way he was treated was quitre clearly Hanley flexing his muscles by banishing him to the reserves.

I remember us going to a number of reserve games that year and Adamson was quite clearly a man amongst boys, but Hanley left him in there for the entire year, despite the atrociously bad Paul Davidson playing a large number of game at prop for us that year.

Hanley may have won the league that year, but he was as mad as a sack of badgers.Just because Adamson didn't figure in his plans doesn't mean he couldn't have been good for us.

Re: Kyle Eastmond in England RU team today : Tue May 28, 2013 9:16 pm  

Destry wrote:

Does that including signing Dave Tanner when we went to watch Mark Preston?

Another myth unfortunately - we knew exactly what we were getting when we signed Tanner. He always looked a very good player at #1 but unfortunately always had Vievers in his way and so ended up spending most of his Saints career being not quick enough stuck out on the wing. A crying shame.

And we actually had Mark Preston play for us as a triallist in a reserves game and turned him down for being too small. He then went to Wigan and scored 45 tries in his first season. We spent a fortune on signing the colossus that was Brimah Kebbie instead, who I doubt scored 45 tries in his entire career... Numpties doesn't even begin to describe our management back then.

Re: Kyle Eastmond in England RU team today : Tue May 28, 2013 9:52 pm  

Offside Monkey wrote:

There was only one reason Adamson didn't work out - Ellery Hanley.

Adamson was signed before Hanley was announced as coach, so obviously a move by the board. The way he was treated was quitre clearly Hanley flexing his muscles by banishing him to the reserves.

I remember us going to a number of reserve games that year and Adamson was quite clearly a man amongst boys, but Hanley left him in there for the entire year, despite the atrociously bad Paul Davidson playing a large number of game at prop for us that year.

Hanley may have won the league that year, but he was as mad as a sack of badgers.Just because Adamson didn't figure in his plans doesn't mean he couldn't have been good for us.

Yet some would suggest that this attitude is what is required today at Saints with regards to Lance. I've heard a few times, drop him to the reserves or send him to rochdale, to force him out.

Re: Kyle Eastmond in England RU team today : Wed May 29, 2013 7:43 am  

bewareshadows wrote:

Yet some would suggest that this attitude is what is required today at Saints with regards to Lance. I've heard a few times, drop him to the reserves or send him to rochdale, to force him out.

Hanley was ruthless, but my point was that the Adamson thing wasn't based on his playing or training ability, more Hanley demonstrating his power over the players.
He tried the same thing with Tommy Martyn the season later and we know how that ended.