 THE FORMER ST GEORGE Illawarra forward Mike Cooper has had a few things to say about the Dragons' 2016 season in Rugby League Week.
One line stood out — when Cooper commented, ‘They always revert back to the glory years of 11 in a row. That was a long time ago, the club’s sort of built on that and still talking about that, and I think they maybe need to move on from that era because that isn’t where the club is at the minute.’ Rather than 'moving on', we reproduce some words from Norm Provan that first appeared in Never Before, Never Again and were featured a few weeks ago in this blog ... ‘I always thought it was stupid when I heard Saints coaches of the ’80s and ’90s say that the deeds of the St George premiership-winning sides put unfair pressure on their teams to succeed. I say these coaches didn’t use the great tradition enough. That winning tradition should be a very strong attraction to young players. Saints’ tradition in the ’50s and ’60s attracted players from everywhere to trial with us and be a part of it. ‘That tradition shouldn’t be killed. ‘You’ve only got to put the film up and see how Billy Smith could put a player through a gap, and how Raper could go all day, and the speed and acceleration of Gasnier. You’ve only got to look in the record books and see what we achieved. I guess those [latter-day] coaches just wanted to be judged on their own merits, on what they accomplished on their own.’ |
