I was always a big Gleeson fan. I think some Wire fans reinvented history after he left to make out he wasn't good for us and thought it was funny that we started winning trophies after he left (although he had the last laugh by winning another SL trophy). But he was a good player for us and an important talisman player that we were serious about being a team that could attract quality players. At the time he joined us we were a mid table side in transition and there was a lot of pressure on Gleeson and in his first season he was fantastic. For me the peak of his career was his last season at Saints (when he got banned) and his first season with us. Since 2006 he was more of a great player on occasions and lacked some of the early consistency.
Gleeson's one of those players who actually made the step up from being a young player with potential, to the real deal. A lot don't, there were other young guys around at that time like Thorman and maybe even Yeaman too who never kicked on the way Gleeson did. The turning point for me was around the end of 2003. He had been a bit off the boil in his second year at Saints and wasn't in the Ashes squad and then we had an England A v Australia match and Gleeson was superb, looked every bit an international player. I remember him turning up in the 2004 season looking much fitter much stronger and he was a class apart. He tore us up in Saints first visit to the HJ in early 2004 and I remember saying to my mates then, Gleeson is the best centre in SL, he's improving at a frightening rate, so when we signed him I was made up, it was the first time since Jonathan Davies we had signed a top player at his peak. A lot of people were ready for him to fail at Warrington but he delivered in a team that was quite dependent on him and it cannot have been much fun for him at times.
I thought Gleeson was often underrated in some aspects of his game. When we signed him people said he never puts his winger away but Henry Fa'afili was always at the top of the try charts outside him. The underrated things were his defence and his fitness, both his strength and stamina were top notch when he was with us. He didn't just have a good step on him, he had the strength to hold defenders off him which is why he was a very dangerous finisher from 10-15 yards out, he would just step to get the defender slightly off balance and then his strength would just push them off. He was a solid player in defence for us too.
Only one thing IMO separated Gleeson from being genuine world class, he lacked a yard of pace. He was a very good player in all the technical aspects of being a centre but he didn't have a yard of extra pace that some of the top Aussie centres had.
One other thing I don't think he was the most driven player, and after a year and a half at Warrington I think he got frustrated with our lack of progress and he went in to coasting mode a bit. You would still see him have a handful of super games, but they become less often and he became more of a peripheral figure that didn't seem to want to be there. I remember wondering if he was starting to decline because his 2008 season with us was not that special but in the 2008 World Cup he looked good again. I thought in internationals he was always very good and on international form he was a better GB centre than Senior, Connolly or Newlove were.
He's had an alright career to be fair whatever people say about him 'wasting his talent' or whatever, he won a couple of Super Leagues and a Challenge Cup, won a lot of GB caps and distinguished himself against the Aussies, and he played for the biggest clubs in the game, and the pies as well, so he can look back on his career and be happy with it.
