Bradford 2003/04 v Wigan today : Sat Feb 21, 2009 9:47 pm
Anyone considered the 2 teams/squads that BN had managed to nurture/form whilst coaching?
For plenty of arguments sake, lets examine the Bulldozing Bradford team/squad that BN managed to win silverware with and draw comparisons to the shower of shite we are watching at the moment:
1. Withers, with Reardon in reserve - we dont have a full back better than Withers and certainly don't have a reserve FB as good as Reardon in his prime in 03/04
2/5. Vaikona & Vainikolo - nowt in comparison
3/4. Hape/Gilmour with Paul Johnson as reserve - see above
6/7. Robbie Paul/Leon Pryce/Deacon with Karl Pratt in reserve - ok we've got Tommy but only as good as any 1 of theirs and certainly not better
8/10 Fielden (in his prime)/Vagana/Paul Anderson/Lee Radford/Brian McDermott - I'm at a loss to present a pecking order of our current 4 props but am certain that Fielden in 2009 or any of the other 3 we have to endure would struggle to get into that Bulls squad.
9. Lowes versus Piggy/MM/Flanagan - another inferiority
11/12. Peacock/Langley/Gartner - probably as close as talented as we are going to get but still a difficult argument to justify that Hock/Tomkins/Hansen are anything like
13. Logan Swann/Mike Forshaw - we've got Lockers, do I need to spell who's better out?
Still, we'll get the old cliches trotted out about "club in transition", "the season doesnt end in March", "we'll take a good look at ourselves and wont make the same mistakes again", "yadda yadda".
To think, I publicly slated (in the WEP) John Dorahy when he made a dumb decision of playing a league game over in Cas the day after 10 Wigan players had respresented GB v NZ and we had to travel over and see the team of reserves get battered. The man was a demi-god when compared to the man that brought this lot together.
