Webbo wrote:
Going back a fair few years before that, we sent scouts to watch a young winger at Preston Grasshoppers, a right flyer.
Reports came back that he'd had a decent all round game, and rumours were that wi*an were also dead keen on him. We signed him up straight away, full of delight about getting one over on the Pies, unaware that for the match we'd seen, Dave Tanner had replaced the injured Mark Preston.
Preston went on to have a great few years at wi*an, scoring shedloads of tries. Dave Tanner forged an unspectacular career at Saints as a mediocre utility player.
(the story's probably BS, or at least heavily exaggerated but, given the Laurel & Hardy management of the club at the time, certainly believeable)
Saints actually gave Mark Preston a run-out in a reserves game as a trialist and had ample chance to bag him, but by all accounts decided not to sign him as he was "too small". He then of course went to Wigan instead and scored a gazillion tries for a short while while we went and paid big money for the man mountain of Brimah Kebbie instead... We really were run by a bunch of clueless muppets in those days...
Anyway, Tanner was a more than decent player who never let us down and suffered a little from being just too versatile - he would have made a very good permanent #1 in the "pre-pivot" era if not for Veivers being in the way, but unfortunately spent most of his time labouring on the wing where, as already pointed out, his lack of either pace or size/strength meant he could never be more than average. Plus, great first season scoring for fun at a completely dominant and overpowering Wigan side where I could have scored 20+ tries aside, Preston didn't exactly pull up a lot of trees himself career-wise, did he?
It's a nice story though
