easyWire wrote:
Interestingly, can anyone think of a player with as much natural talent and Rugby League skills as Harris to come through RL since then? Not sure I can, no disrespect to the likes of Tomkins et al.
Difficult one to answer because the game changed since then and meant a talent like Harris wouldn't have been as effective. He would have still been a very good player but as he didn't have express pace he wouldn't have been able to break the line as much in the era of more organised defences and those long cut out balls that created tries from nothing would have been picked off as interceptions too often for it to be worth the risk.
You could take Briers v Harris and say Briers was a player that emerged after Harris, but who was better suited to the direction the game was going. I am a big fan of Harris but in fairness he dominated SL at a time when the game went through a dip in standard. After the decline of the great Wigan sides and the retirement of a lot of legends like Hanley, Schofield, Davies, there was a dip in the late 90s where a lot of SL felt like lower division standard and even the teams at the top had a lot of ordinary players, before a spate of big NRL signings and a crop of very good young players at Leeds/Bradford/Wigan/Hull boosted standards in the 2000s. It was in this late 90s dip that Harris was dominant. Robbie Paul was another player who dominated in that era who maybe would not have been
as dominant outside of that dip.
So yes definitely one of my all time favourite Warrington players and terrific to watch but I think you can make a case that Briers, Sinfield and Leon Pryce, who all came through after Harris, had talents that were more suited to the direction the game was going.
