Re: Saints team of 2006 : Fri Oct 05, 2012 5:06 pm  

Broxy Music wrote:

Although the Saints team of 2006 was class, the Millward era was the best side ive ever seen with Long, Martyn, Cunningham and Sculthorpe (the period when Sculthorpe was out of this world). They really were 'the entertainers' and it will be a long time before we see a team like that again. The 2000 grand final in particular both wigan and saints had teams that would smash this current wire team

Paul Wellens
Steve Hall
Kevin Iro
Sean Hoppe
Anthony Sullivan
Tommy Martyn
Sean Long
Apollo Perelini
Keiron Cunningham
Julian O'Neill
Tim Jonkers
Chris Joynt
Paul Sculthorpe

Jason Robinson
Brett Dallas
Kris Radlinski
Steve Renouf
Dave Hodgson
Tony smith
Willie Peters
Terry O'Connor
Terry Newton
Neil Cowie
Mick Cassidy
Denis Betts
Andy Farrell

How people could look at some of the names in those 2 teams and then STILL try and maintain that standards in our game haven't collapsed in the last decade just... beggars... belief... And remember that Bradford and Leeds had similar amounts of quality at that time too...

Re: Saints team of 2006 : Fri Oct 05, 2012 5:53 pm  

Broxy Music wrote:

Although the Saints team of 2006 was class, the Millward era was the best side ive ever seen with Long, Martyn, Cunningham and Sculthorpe (the period when Sculthorpe was out of this world). They really were 'the entertainers' and it will be a long time before we see a team like that again. The 2000 grand final in particular both wigan and saints had teams that would smash this current wire team

Paul Wellens
Steve Hall
Kevin Iro
Sean Hoppe
Anthony Sullivan
Tommy Martyn
Sean Long
Apollo Perelini
Keiron Cunningham
Julian O'Neill
Tim Jonkers
Chris Joynt
Paul Sculthorpe

Jason Robinson
Brett Dallas
Kris Radlinski
Steve Renouf
Dave Hodgson
Tony smith
Willie Peters
Terry O'Connor
Terry Newton
Neil Cowie
Mick Cassidy
Denis Betts
Andy Farrell

We had some serious star power in that team. Good job really as we had Steve 'sun tan' Hall on the wing.

Re: Saints team of 2006 : Sat Oct 06, 2012 12:35 am  

Fatbelly, while you are at it, you may as well compare st Helen's football club to the ac Milan side of the early 90s given the gulf in clad is similar

Re: Saints team of 2006 : Sat Oct 06, 2012 1:52 am  

Northampton_Saint wrote:

How people could look at some of the names in those 2 teams and then STILL try and maintain that standards in our game haven't collapsed in the last decade just... beggars... belief... And remember that Bradford and Leeds had similar amounts of quality at that time too...

Those teams were class, that Wigan backline was phenomenal, probably the best ever in SL. The only problem with the Wigan team at that time was it did not have that much depth especially in the forwards, the bench was weak. Saints as well were more exciting then than ever, with Tommy M and Sullivan.

However in general standards in SL were not that strong then. Even Bradford were good because they were bigger and stronger than anyone else but their team had guys like Scott Naylor, Nathan McAvoy, Justin Brooker, Hudson Smith in it, they weren't world beaters. Leeds were very heavily dependent on Iestyn Harris.

Harris back then was a top player who dominated SL, he just used to waltz through defences. When he came back in 2004 the game had moved on and he was never able to find the space he used to although he was still quite an effective player.

Below the top 4 the teams were rubbish back then. Warrington finished 6th and we were garbage we just had Allan Langer so we won some games.

I think the time when SL was really at its strongest was about 2004-05.

Re: Saints team of 2006 : Sat Oct 06, 2012 7:26 pm  

Bump.

Re: Saints team of 2006 : Sun Oct 07, 2012 8:59 am  

Well, I think we can put this debate to rest cant we?

Re: Saints team of 2006 : Sun Oct 07, 2012 11:52 am  

I don't think it was a serious debate, Fatbelly was just winding you up.

However now that Leeds have won 6 Grand Finals it does bring up another point. In the 9 year period from 2004 to 2012 have Leeds had better players than Saints did in the 9 year period from say 1999 to 2007? Saints won 4 Grand Finals in that time.

I wonder if Saints, despite enjoying lots of success, underachieved a bit in terms of Super League titles given the players they had?

I can think of two possible reasons. One is that Saints had to deal with a strong Bradford as rivals, Leeds didn't have the same strength in their rivals. The other is that for a lot of that time Saints had a coach (Millward) who was not in the highest class.

The first point about Bradford I'm undecided. They were much bigger than everyone else and had the edge physically until the rest of the teams started to catch up, but if you looked through the Bradford teams back then its hard to see where they were stronger than Saints. Their best players seemed to be poor man's version of Saints, eg Lowes/Cunningham; Forshaw/Sculthorpe; Deacon/Long; Withers/Wellens; Naylor/Newlove. They had a great front row but Saints weren't so bad up front with guys like Fairleigh, Britt either.

I reckon Saints had the best personnel in SL for that nine year period so maybe came up one or two titles short. By 2006 Saints had a coach who was in the highest class. I wonder whether had Anderson taken over from Hanley in 2000 rather than Millward, Saints would have monopolised success like Wigan did the late 1980s and early 1990s.

This isn't a sly way of trying to have a dig at Saints saying they underachieved, I'd have loved us to win 4 SLs, just wanted to hear your views of my theory...

Re: Saints team of 2006 : Sun Oct 07, 2012 2:11 pm  

sally cinnamon wrote:

I don't think it was a serious debate, Fatbelly was just winding you up.

However now that Leeds have won 6 Grand Finals it does bring up another point. In the 9 year period from 2004 to 2012 have Leeds had better players than Saints did in the 9 year period from say 1999 to 2007? Saints won 4 Grand Finals in that time.

I wonder if Saints, despite enjoying lots of success, underachieved a bit in terms of Super League titles given the players they had?

I can think of two possible reasons. One is that Saints had to deal with a strong Bradford as rivals, Leeds didn't have the same strength in their rivals. The other is that for a lot of that time Saints had a coach (Millward) who was not in the highest class.

The first point about Bradford I'm undecided. They were much bigger than everyone else and had the edge physically until the rest of the teams started to catch up, but if you looked through the Bradford teams back then its hard to see where they were stronger than Saints. Their best players seemed to be poor man's version of Saints, eg Lowes/Cunningham; Forshaw/Sculthorpe; Deacon/Long; Withers/Wellens; Naylor/Newlove. They had a great front row but Saints weren't so bad up front with guys like Fairleigh, Britt either.

I reckon Saints had the best personnel in SL for that nine year period so maybe came up one or two titles short. By 2006 Saints had a coach who was in the highest class. I wonder whether had Anderson taken over from Hanley in 2000 rather than Millward, Saints would have monopolised success like Wigan did the late 1980s and early 1990s.

This isn't a sly way of trying to have a dig at Saints saying they underachieved, I'd have loved us to win 4 SLs, just wanted to hear your views of my theory...

Fair point and I've often thought the same actually - in retrospect I think we were a couple of trophies light in that era considering the incredible players we had and we probably would have won more without Millward (although a lot less entertainingly ). I think it's undoubtedly the case that we had a lot more competition then than Leeds have had the last 5 years as well though - dismiss Bradford all you like but they were an awesome team on their day, could chew up regular season games much more easily than we could with their dominating pack and were always tough to beat come the big games - a bit like a supercharged version of Wigan over the last couple of seasons actually.

Re: Saints team of 2006 : Fri Oct 12, 2012 9:40 am  

Possibly Saints were a couple of GF wins light between 1999 and 2007.

1999-2002 , we won 3 GFs in 4 years; but 2003-7 saw us reach "only" 2 more GFs, winning only one.

However, I think there were mitigating factors .......... 2003 the Bulls were the best side in the comp; but in 2004, 2005 and 2007 we suffered due to the fallout of the betting scandal (possibly) and more than our fair share of serious injuries to key players (definitely) .

I know it's all "ifs" and "maybes", but Scully was battling injuries from 2004 onwards, we were injury ravaged in the 2005 play-offs (who can forget Newton's assaults on Lee Gilmour and Sean Long), etc etc .... I definitely think 2005 was one that got away.

Re: Saints team of 2006 : Fri Oct 12, 2012 11:23 pm  

Yes I think 2005 Saints were pretty much as good as they were in 2006. It was just due to injuries at the wrong part of the season that they didn't do it.

For all the 'entertaining' reputation Saints had with Millward, there was something missing. Saints had a blase attitude sometimes and no truly great side should cop 50/70 point thrashings like Millward's Saints copped once a season or so. When Anderson came in there was no more of that, he might not have been a big media personality but he knew how to put discipline and order into a team of great talent and he got awesome results. I think it was a shame for Anderson that he didn't get at least one of the 2007 or 2008 GFs but at least you were always winning Challenge Cups with him.

Also Scully's injury record is a factor here - if Scully had been fit all the time then I reckon you could add a couple more trophies to Saints record in that era.