Its a good job some of you never managed to see Tommy Gentles hiding behind a snowball when he signed for Wigan in the fifties. also another very tiny GB scrum half was Jeff Stevenson at Leeds.
He was only 5ft-5" and well under 10st.

2001 Martyn was in his pomp, probably was injured though but we had the likes of Richard Horne and Ryan Sheridan who could have paired with Long or Deacon. Just admit it was a tactic employed by Waite and not through lack of halves

Yeah Martyn was injured in 01 (I watched the Australia game where we beat them last night to get myself in a good mood for Sunday and they mentioned him in the list of halves we were missing).

Horne - Was he ever good enough to play test rugby at stand off? If he was, I doubt it was when he was 19-21 years old
Sheridan - Missed nearly all of 2001 through injury, then in 2002 he was so good for Leeds that they sold him to Widnes.

Must try harder

If you watched it then you'd have seen Sculthorpe at 6 and Mike Forshaw at 7 with Richard Horne on the bench. Sinfield was playing 9, I know we had injuries at 9 in 2001 with Cunningham and Newton so that's why either Forshaw or Sinfield played 9 but at that time there were decent 6s and 7s so why choose 2 13s as halfback partners? Surely not all Martyn, Briers, Long, Deacon, Orr, Tony Smith etc were all injured?

It was a bad year for injuries! Martyn, Long and Deacon - all injured. Briers - off field issues I think. Smith was past it by then.

IIRC Tony Smith played for England the year before and didn't he score a try from a kick? Plus that year we had Paul Cooke too. You say Briers had off field issues but be played against France in the warm up in Avignon.

What's your excuse for 2003? What injuries did we have then?



Like 97 and 2001 and almost in 2003 we need a 13 at 6. However, due to the dumbing down of back rowers and loose forwards just calling them middles and playing props in those positions we don't have a 13 capable of doing so other than O'Loughlin who is injured.

Going back to the original point Hampshire is too small for my liking