That ones easy. Saints 1-13 was a million times better

yeah it just wasnt

I always thought the best backline in SL history was Wigan in 2000. Radlinski, Dallas, Connolly, Renouf, Robinson.

Yeah and in 2001 we had Lam and Johns at halfback. Matthew Johns was a very good player who for one reason or another never really got the chance to show his best at Wigan.

Yeah Robinson had gone then which was a big blow but David Hodgson was around then and he had pace as well. That era of SL was quite exciting as defences weren't as good or structured as they are now so you would get a lot more broken play and players scoring from distance. I remember the Wigan v Saints games in the Endacott v Millward era being great entertainment. Even Warrington who were largely crap, were able to stay in games against good teams because Langer and Briers and our pace in the centres meant we kept scoring points.



Another feature of this era was that Bradford had a huge advantage in conditioning over the rest of the league. They had a lot of players that were pedestrian compared to Wigan, Saints or Leeds: I wonder how many games Spruce, Naylor, McAvoy and Brooker would have got in that Wigan back line, but Bradford were ahead in trophies at the time.



The Matty Johns thing was strange, that was a huge signing but from my memory the press and fans were quite cold on him from the start. Some of it was because this was quite a "populist" era in terms of everybody having it in for foreign signings, all the letters that would be written in to League Express were like UKIP/Gary Schofield view of "we should limit it to 1 per team and make clubs give young lads a chance".



I think early on Matty Johns was injured and Phil Jones came in for a game on Sky and got a hat-trick and that set the narrative of "Matty Johns is holding back opportunities from Jones".

he was injured a lot Johns

Says similar in Frank's book I believe

I used to talk regularly to a Newcastle Knights fanatic in Australia around the time and Knights supporters were devastated when Matty Johns left the Knights. I think a lot of people over here were comparing him to his brother which meant whatever he did was never going to be good enough, nobody could come close to Andrew Johns at that time other than Darren Lockyer but Matty Johns was a great player in his own right. You could see with some of his touches that there was a much better player under what we were seeing. I think as has been said, he wasnt 100% fit and i dont think he ever particularly settled here.

Yes the Knights fans are very attached to their home grown players. They were really gutted to lose the semi final to the Roosters in 2000 when they blew a big lead. The script had been written for the Johns brothers to win a second Grand Final together before Matty headed to England. In the event they won it the next year but Matty wasn't there. Brett Kimmorley came through the Knights juniors at the same time as the Johns brothers, they were stacked for halfback talent.



There had been a lot of chopping and changing in the halves in that era for Wigan....Paul/Smith, Florimo/Clinch, Peters/Farrell, Lam/Johns, Lam/O'Neill, it was a different partnership every year and probably didn't help with consistency.

then Orr and Lam, I agree with that

It still blows my mind that this was ever seen as a good idea. Good lord. A lot of the others were great players, we just didn't keep them around long enough (or couldn't, in cases like Willie Peters).



I'll also never really understand why we didn't give Luke Robinson a go and instead ended up with Orr (who was mostly useless as I recall) and Moran in later years. I mean I know one of the stories about why he was let go (re: Pongia) but surely it was more than that?

Orr was good, Robinson was moved on for having a big mouth if I recall, Clinch and Chester was a worse selection