Dougie's sides played some great rugby and his Widnes team featuring Offiah, Tait, Myler, Davies etc was one of the most entertaining (and dirty) I've ever seen. He was a good for a quote too. I remember him saying Franny Cummins would be the next Gene Miles!

Paul Vautin's description of Alex Murphy's coaching is hilarious. All he knew about fitness was getting the squad doing laps, and apparently barely interacted during training unless the press turned up, and he's suddenly get involved. While the Aussies have more and better athletes, one reason for our relative decline in the 70s and 80s was the standard of coaching. Crazy because we previously had coaches like Roy Francis who were way ahead of their time.

He was brilliant at picking players and players wanted to play for him, I was meaning limited in technical coaching but it was a different era, and he was unlucky in that in those later years he was up against that Wigan super team, albeit I think they were far better coached.

I was one of his signings.......for his central heating company. Lasted 2 weeks, rubbish job.

Schofield didn't reckon much to Dougie according to his biography. It's no wonder Leeds won nothing with that level of dysfunction going on behind the scenes.

IIRC Schofield was battling to keep his 'clique' in the team on top over that of Hanley and the Dougie signings. Dougie responded by basically getting rid of all Schofield's mates in the seasons that followed. At the same time you had the likes of Bobbie Goulding trashing Dougie's car (no wonder he didn't stay long, despite the obvious talent).