Psychedelic Casual wrote:
I actually think this is up there with the very best teams in SL history and we didn’t manage to win the GF:
Hodgson; J Monaghan, King, Atkins, Riley; Briers, Myler; Morley, M Monaghan, Carvell, Anderson, Grix, Bridge.
Westwood, Clarke, Cooper, Solomona.
That’s just a top left winger and scrum half away from being the best side I’ve seen in the last few decades.
It was good enough to win two GFs at least.
The side you list above is basically the 2011 team; sub in Ratchford for King; Waterhouse for Anderson and Hill for Clarke and you have the 2012-13 team which maintained the standard of player for those three years, when you consider the rise of Hill offsetting a decline in Morley in his last season.
That was a team clearly good enough to win a GF over those three seasons, the reason we didn't was we were twice foiled by Leeds (2011 playoff, which I found the most disappointing of the lot, and 2012 GF) and once by Wigan in 2013.
The Wigan one was down to luck. Regardless of what I said above about how great Shaun Wane was, if Joel Monaghan hadn't got injured in that game, we would have won that Grand Final, there was no way Wigan would have come back.
The interesting question comes in the two Leeds games as those were games where Leeds outplayed us. Was this down to the coaches, or was it that their core of senior players: Sinfield, McGuire, Burrow and Peacock (plus Buderus in 2011), who were just better at winning big games than our core of Briers, Michael Monaghan, Morley and Hodgson. Those guys were winning GFs before our rise, during our peak and after our decline, they faced various different challengers in Saints, Warrington and Wigan teams and won at Old Trafford every time.
The other interesting thing looking back at those Leeds v Warrington games, was that at the time I felt we had the better squad all round but now I think I underrated Leeds quality. There wasn't much in it in the pack (Morley/Hill, M Monaghan, Carvell, Waterhouse matched Peacock, Buderus/Burrow, Leuluai, JJB but we had better depth in the rest of the pack than they did with Bailey, Delaney, Kirke etc). But actually I think they had a better back line than we did: Webb/Hardaker; Ben Jones-Bishop, Watkins, Ablett, Hall. I don't think Riley or Atkins would have got in their back line.
If Brian Mc had coached Warrington and TS had that Leeds team, would we have won GFs instead of Leeds? I reckon that Leeds team would have won under TS as well.
Imagine if Sinfield, McGuire, Burrow and Peacock had been Warrington players over all those years, I have no doubt we would have won multiple Grand Finals and dominated the game. But if you subbed those guys in to Saints, Wigan or even Hull they would probably have done the same there.
