RFL 125 Years - Greatest Ever Team

The Rugby Football League is 125 years old in 2020. Cynics might suggest that it is the most rugby league thing in the world to be celebrating this milestone at a time when the game has been hit by an unprecedented suspension, but it really is just bad luck. While we fans feed off the scraps offered to us in the form of nostalgic re-runs of classic matches, the RFL have sparked some much needed debate by staging a poll to find the greatest team of that 125-year history.

They have somehow narrowed it down to five which I will get to in a minute. First of all let’s get a few honourable mentions out of the way. Those that didn’t make the cut. Everyone will have their own ideas on which is the greatest team since the 1895 formation of the northern union and your preference will no doubt be influenced by your date of birth and how long you have been watching the game. None of the five shortlisted sides pre-date Sky Sports’ coverage of the game which began in 1990 which tells you either that the people behind this are targeting a younger audience or that they have taken the view that even the best of the semi-professional sides could not live with those who have prospered in the full-time era since 1996.

When I was growing up there seemed to be an endless stream of great Wigan sides. Stars like Ellery Hanley, Andy Gregory and Shaun Edwards enjoyed stellar careers and have overflowing medal collections. Any one of their sides from 1988-1995 could have made the cut. This was a period during which they won a ludicrous eight consecutive Challenge Cup finals at Wembley. Yes they had a competitive advantage as the only fully professional outfit for part of that time, but they nevertheless played some scintillating rugby. The mere sight of the cherry and white hooped shirt could give this impressionable youngster a sickening, sinking feeling before a ball was kicked. Success in those days was winning the odd derby or a John Player Trophy or Lancashire Cup, such was their grip on the first division title and the Challenge Cup.

That is until Widnes came along. It seems a world away now as they toil away in the Championship but the pre-Vikings Chemics were a formidable force in the late 80s and early 90s. Jonathan Davies’ high profile switch from rugby union was a roaring success along with that of John Devereux and the slightly less heralded Alan Tait. Yet their main weapon was the outlandish pace of Martin Offiah. Before he smelled the money on offer from Wigan Offiah scored 181 tries in 145 appearances for Widnes as they won back-to-back titles in 1987-88 and 1988-89. They then added the World title in 1989 when they beat Canberra Raiders on a memorable night at Old Trafford.

What about Hull KR? Back-to-back title winners in 1983-84 and 1984-85 and the first team to complete the league championship and Premiership double. Or the Leeds side of the late 1960s and early 1970s that won two titles in three years? Wakefield Trinity won two in a row just prior to that in 1966-67 and 1967-68. Any one of Ian Millward’s Saints sides between 2000-2005 could have been included if we are judging this on aesthetic pleasure and star power. For me it is only right to judge it on trophy haul, and although Millward picked up two Super League titles and two Challenge Cups it is hard to argue that any of them did quite enough to make the list. I will say though that the 1996 double-winners under Shaun McRae, featuring Paul Newlove, Bobby Goulding and Scott Gibbs are unfortunate not to make it.

The only one of the sides I have mentioned to make it into the final five is, perhaps predictably, a Wigan side. Specifically their 1994 vintage, which won the title only on points difference from both Bradford Northern and Warrington. The latter could by then count Davies among their ranks. But neither could quite edge Wigan who picked up the seventh of their eight straight Challenge Cup wins with a 26-16 win over Leeds at Wembley. That game featured a barely believable 90-metre glide to the line by the imperious Offiah who dropped to his knees in an iconic yet at the time vomit-inducing celebration which is now captured in statue form at the new Wembley.

All very impressive, yet I suspect it is Wigan’s World Club Challenge win over Brisbane Broncos in the Australian side’s back yard that has sealed their inclusion in this list. A side containing Offiah, Edwards, Jason Robinson, Gary Connolly, Andy Farrell and Sky Sports fashion criminal Phil Clarke went to ANZ Stadium and won 20-14. They did so despite the absence of first choice prop forwards Andy Platt and Kelvin Skerrett. They faced down a Broncos team featuring greats of the game like Steve Renouf, Allan Langer, the Walters brothers Kevin and Kerrod and a pacy, powerful winger just a month shy of his 20th birthday by the name of Wendell Sailor.

English club teams had beaten Australian opposition before. As well as Widnes’ 1989 triumph Wigan had themselves won it twice before, beating Manly in 1987 and Penrith in 1991, but nobody had done it on Australian soil. And they haven’t since. The side coached by former captain Graeme West following the sudden sacking of John Dorahy added another first when they became the first rugby league team to be named BBC Sports Review Of The Year Team Of The Year.

Jumping forward nine years to the next on the list and another team that would go on to be crowned World Champions, the 2003 Bradford Bulls. The switch to summer by then meant that they had to wait until early 2004 to take that title and add it to the Grand Final and Challenge Cup double they had already pocketed. The club had reinvented itself with the advent of Super League and summer rugby and had already won Super League titles in 1997 and 2001. Yet they entered 2003 on the back of some painful memories, beaten by Sean Long’s last-gasp drop-goal in the 2002 Grand Final. Having lost to Saints at Wembley in the Challenge Cup finals of both 1996 and 1997 they were thoroughly sick of the sight of them.

Even Saints couldn’t halt the Bulls in 2003. Brian Noble’s side won the league by three points from Leeds Rhinos and also scored a 22-20 Challenge Cup final win over Daryl Powell’s side under the roof at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium. However, the league itself was not enough by 2003 thanks to the 1998 introduction of the Grand Final. A Bulls side featuring Lesley Vainikolo, James Lowes, Stuart Fielden and Jamie Peacock with Robbie Paul and Leon Pryce among the reinforcements off the bench beat Wigan 25-12 in the end of season showpiece.

Four months later they were too strong for Penrith Panthers, winning 22-4 at Huddersfield. Tries from Vainikolo and Pryce as well as prop turned actor Rob Parker and New Zealand international Logan Swann were more than enough to see off John Lang’s Panthers who could only respond through Luke Priddis’ solitary effort. Following that the Bulls were holders of the League Leaders Shield, the Challenge Cup, the Super League Grand Final trophy and the World Club Challenge title all at the same time. You don’t get many of those for a pound.

The time-hop isn’t quite as big for our next contender. Saints now enter the conversation with their own all-conquering side. They too would hold the same four titles as the 2003-04 Bulls had by the early part of 2007 thanks to victory over Brisbane Broncos after a dominant 2006 domestic season.

Coached by Daniel Anderson after the shock and fairly controversial departure of Millward a year previously, Saints were unstoppable in 2006. They topped the league by eight points, suffering only four league defeats from 28 regular season games before seeing off Hull FC in the Grand Final 28-8. There appeared to be no weakness anywhere in this Saints side which contained future legends of the game such as Paul Wellens, Sean Long, Kieron Cunningham and the genius of Jamie Lyon. A young James Graham came off the bench. Paul Sculthorpe missed the game through injury but was another all-time great that Anderson could call upon during the year. So star-studded and consistently brilliant was this Saints side that it joined Wigan’s 1994 team as only the second rugby league side to win the BBC Sports Review Of The Year Team Of The Year award.

Lyon had been replaced by Matthew Gidley by the time Saints faced the Broncos in early 2007 at Bolton’s Reebok Stadium. Gidley’s impact is often understated. Replacing Lyon was arguably an impossible job but Gidley made a reasonable fist of it with 48 tries in 123 appearances and two Challenge Cup winners medals in 2007 and 2008. On this night he was a provider, setting up Ade Gardner’s first try before the ex-Barrow winger soared into the Lancashire night sky to claim his second to secure Saints’ 18-14 win and cement their place among the greatest teams of all-time.

The year 2015 is not one fondly remembered by Saints fans but it is there we go next. Keiron Cunningham was in the first year of what turned out to be a disappointing spell as head coach at what was then called Langtree Park. Saints were the defending champions after their 14-6 Grand Final win over Wigan in 2014. Yet by the end of the following season the power had shifted east of the Pennines as Leeds Rhinos joined the exclusive club of treble winning sides.

Brian McDermott had been a key figure in the Bradford Bulls front row a decade earlier. Cutting his coaching teeth in the capital with Harlequins RL he switched back up north to Leeds in 2011. Grand Final success followed in 2012, the Rhinos’ fifth title in six seasons. Yet the best of Leeds’ Grand Final winning sides emerged in 2015 under McDermott’s stewardship. He implemented a fast, off-loading style of attacking rugby which perfectly suited the personnel at his disposal. A back five of Zak Hardaker, Tom Briscoe, Kallum Watkins, Joel Moon and Ryan Hall was as good as any in world rugby league at the time, but it was the influence of some ageing rugby league legends that set this team apart from their rivals. Danny McGuire, Kevin Sinfield, Rob Burrow and Peacock all had arguably the best seasons of their careers. The Rhinos only edged the league on points difference after the newly introduced Super 8s phase, but they racked up a record 50-0 score line in the Challenge Cup final win over Hull KR before settling the argument with Wigan by virtue of a 22-20 win. McGuire crossed for two tries to add to further efforts from Moon and Josh Walters.

The Rhinos could not add the world title to their trophy haul. They were comprehensively beaten 38-4 by North Queensland Cowboys at Headingley at the start of a 2016 season that would see them scrapping to avoid the drop to the Championship in the Middle 8s. Yet it would be unfair to accuse them of lacking longevity given that their 2015 success was their sixth in nine seasons. And by far the most impressive.

The last contender are the current champions. Saints entered 2019 with many raising doubts about their ability to get over the line in the very biggest games. Justin Holbrook’s first season in charge saw Saints storm the League Leaders Shield by 10 points, only to be upset in the play-off semi-final at home to Warrington. Speculation regarding the future of the outstanding Steve Prescott Man Of Steel Ben Barba was a distraction, but coming in the wake of a chastening 35-16 Challenge Cup semi-final defeat to Catalans Dragons it all added up to a fair degree of fear and loathing among the Saints faithful.

Barba did leave amid a hail of serious allegations of domestic abuse which ultimately scuppered the move to North Queensland Cowboys that he had already agreed. His replacement was former Cowboy Lachlan Coote, while Holbrook also added Fijian centre Kevin Naiqama from Wests Tigers. The results were spectacular. Saints lost only three of their 29 regular season games, two of which came at an eventually relegated London where Holbrook chose to field demonstrably weaker sides. The only question was whether this time they could negotiate the play-offs to reach and ultimately win the club’s seventh Super League crown.

They dismissed Wigan in the Qualifying Semi-Final with a ruthless display. Saints ran in seven tries against Adrian Lam’s men. Mark Percival grabbed a double and crossed again in the 23-6 Grand Final win over Salford. Ian Watson’s side has shocked everyone by reaching Old Trafford but were found out by the now undisputed champions who also scored through Morgan Knowles and Zeb Taia. There was quality throughout the side but it is perhaps their fearsome front three of Alex Walmsley, Luke Thompson and James Roby that had been the driving force. It is doubtful whether Saints have had a stronger front row at any point in their history.

Saints could not add either the Challenge Cup or the World Club Challenge. Defeat at Wembley to Warrington and a 20-8 loss to Sydney Roosters at the start of 2020 probably prevents this side getting the nod as the RFL’s greatest ever in 125 years. Yet with Holbrook having now left for the Gold Coast it is a side which ensures that he does leave a legacy from his two-year stint. He had improved the team immeasurably from the dark days of the end of Cunningham’s time in charge but he needed that Grand Final win to secure his place in Saints folklore.

So there’s your five contenders, spanning just 26 of the 125 years of rugby league in the UK. They all have their strengths, phenomenal achievements and a generous serving of star quality. Which one is your favourite?