I mean if Briers had stayed at Saints in 1997, and Warrington had signed Long in 1997, how do you reckon history would have turned out?

From our point of view, how do you think Long would have gone with us? Would we have been better or worse during the DVDV, Plange or Cullen era? Would Long have made it to the GB team had he played for Warrington? Would he have brought more consistency than Briers (in the early days)?

What about from Saints point of view....do you reckon they would have been an even better side with Briers there? What would Briers have done with targets like Gardner and Meli to kick to, or with a back line to spread the ball wide with guys like Newlove, Gidley, Albert etc? Would Briers have been GB first choice halfback for a decade...?

Difficult one.
Briers has the better passing and kicking game, but Long had more pace and was a better defender.
They would have made a very good halfback pair.

I agree they would have been good together. You could say in the early days, Briers and Martyn would have been too similar and Long's running game was a great foil for Martyn.

One for you then Rogues what about having Briers or Long at Wigan, instead of Tony Smith, Lam and Leuluai, how do you think that would have turned out?

I wouldn't swap either of them for Lam, he was the complete scrum half, but Lam and Long could have been very good, as could Briers and Barrett.

btw if you back through my posts I have always rated Briers with ball in hand, it's just his defence that has been a big problem for him over the years. Scott Dureau (sp) is very similar at Catalan.

he drives a peugot, scott dureau

If we had kept Sculthorpe & Harris we wouldn't have needed Briers.
Goulding was still at Saints so Briers had to go somewhere.

At least we didn't get Goulding, Briers has turned out better than that sh*t house.

I thought we had gone for Goulding before Briers. But he wanted too much to sign for us.

I'd be very surprised if we had gone for Goulding, regardless of finances.

I remember the Goulding to Warrington thing being reported in the papers, as I remember it, it was shortly after Briers joined us rather than before, Briers had been with us for about a month or so when something went on at Saints and there was a serious fall out between Goulding and the club and they wanted rid, and the story was they tried to get Briers back from us and offered Goulding. In the end Goulding stayed at Saints whilst an uneasy relationship simmered for a while, then they ended up selling him to Huddersfield and signing Long from Widnes.

Goulding was a terrific player but he was one of those guys like Gazza or Joey Barton in that you can't fault his commitment or desire to win but he was too highly strung and wound up and his personality just ended up disrupting the team he was in. Goulding's career was effectively over at 25, after that last season at Saints he spent the rest of his days at crap sides like Hudds, Wakey, Salford and Leigh which was a shame for a player of his quality.

In fairness to Briers and Long, whilst a lot has been written about them being characters off the field, neither of them were disruptive influences to a team like Goulding was.

Depends what you read/believe. A mate of mine spoke to Henry Fa'afili just before he moved away from Warrington, he allegedly said the sole reason he never won anything with Warrington was down to Briers and his overwhelming influence at the club at that time. I personally never believed my mate when he told me, I found it hard to believe that Moran would put money into the club and allow Briers to ruin it all.

I heard it was because of the Henry shuffle