Who?

Mark Jones was seen as a real hard man in RU, Hull paid £100,000 for him and he was awful, a complete pudding. I think he turned out for Warrington too if I'm not mistaken?

Point taken. Many apologies. It is the O.F. tendency coming to the fore again.

In mitigation, there are some contributors to this forum who express opinions about players they have never seen play.

If it makes you feel any better, I remember Eric. Classy, orthodox FB and a good goal kicker. Played with some decent backs too; Melling, Aspinall, Glover on the wing, Edwards and then Gordon at SH. He left around '64 I think, when a certain ageing Charlie Winslade had a season with us, still showcasing his outrageous offloads. Happy days, but before the Boer War, so not many on here will be interested.

Yes, I'm another one who saw Eric Fraser play, so there's a chance that us older gentlemen may not be in the minority... albeit a very small chance. I also remember Tommy Conroy coming onto the scene as a young fullback. Not great in attack but awesome in defence. In one game against Wigan he stopped a tank-like Billy Boston dead in his tracks. Billy was so impressed/ surprised that he shook hands with the young Tommy.

IMO John Gallagher's failure in RL was more about mentality than ability. There was nothing wrong with his natural talent, he was a brilliant natural runner suited to RL, yes he would have had to improve some aspects of his game to adapt to league but so did Davies and within half a season he was there.



The best way to sum this up is to look at the contrasting fortunes of Gallagher and Matthew Ridge, who both crossed codes at the same time. Of any RU convert to league, Gallagher was the biggest coup, at the time he signed, because he was regarded as the world's best player in RU. Ridge was second choice fullback for the All Blacks at the time, and had a handful of caps for them. Gallagher and Ridge announced RL deals the same week which left NZRU pretty gutted.



At this time there were a lot of RU players trying their hand in league but it was a hard environment because league players used to test the converts out and see if they were tough enough, hence Gallagher getting the 'treatment' which went too far with a spear tackle that ruined his career. Before then Gallagher had started off OK and I remember him being talked of as a GB call up just before that spear tackle (Gallagher is actually English, he moved to NZ when he was young). Whether it was physical damage or psychological damage, he was never the same player again.



I've seen a fair few interviews with Gallagher and he comes over as a good bloke, school teacher, pretty easy going, he talks rugby league up in the press down there and he doesn't shy away from admitting that he didn't make it here. I reckon he had the same problem that Graeme Hick did in international cricket, he was a nice guy with great talent that didn't have a win-at-all-costs gritty mentality.



Ridge was the total opposite, he did not have Gallagher's talent and was quite small for a rugby player, he was like Hodgson physically. But he had total unshakeable self belief and he was hard, he used to mouth off at the Aussies and sledge them. I remember a story about an Aus v NZ Test where the Aussies were smashing them in the first half, NZ scored just before half time and Ridge (who was Kiwis captain) went round shouting at the Aussies that they were finished and would get overrun in the second half, and NZ did just that...



Ridge didn't mind controversy and the Aussies used to hate him but he was the type of personality that wouldn't have minded being tested out by league players that thought he was a soft union player and wanted to see if he was hard enough, he would have just copped the hits and sledged them. Gallagher was the nice guy who was probably easier to bully.

I'm not 100% in agreement with that.



Ultimately it depends what you want from your team. If you want a third pivot, then Hodgson does a great job of that. Radlinksi and Wellens were both different players and in certain teams (ie ones with enough creativity in the halves and loose forward) I would select Radlinski or Wellens for those teams.



I liked Hodgson, but I think the quality of his play was overstated. Some of his 1 on 1 defence was laughable, his kick return could be very weak and slow and his error count could be extremely high. Of course he had a lot of benefits, his calmness and maturity really helped us over the last few years, and his pass selection was usually of the highest order as was his timing coming into the line.



It will be interesting to see what happens now without this style of fullback in the team but if I'm honest I was already preferring the faster and more elusive Ratchford at 1 when he played there and I'm looking forward to seeing Russell.



Hodgson was a very good player and we should appreciate what he did for the team, but he was nowhere near perfect. I should clarify that I saw little of his career before he came to SL so am only judging him on the latter years of his career.

Keith Affleck took over in the mid 60's at fullback. Average player but a good kicker.

Yes, I would agree with that, he was not one that stuck in my mind. I think Geof Bootle (who took over the kicking duties) had a few games at FB as well.



I didn't realise you were quite that old BW.

Don't forget that excellent defensive fullback between Fraser & Affleck......Tommy Conroy .

Hang on a minute. I started in 1966 and can remember Jeff Bootle being at FB then. He got injured at the end of the 1965-66 season and Affleck came in and scored a superb try at Leigh on Easter Monday on the TV. He then stayed in the side as Bootle retired for a while because of work commitments. Tommy Conroy at this time was the regular A team FB, and when he didn't play it was Tony Scahill.Tommy was a superb defender, but didn't have a lot of pace. Alex Murphy later converted him to the back row.

I seem to remember Conroy after Fraser .I know Affleck was a regular A team fullback for a while & seemed to come in playing more games because of his goal kicking which went from brilliant to horrendous on occasions. Didn't Bootle come in after Affleck. When Conroy played the goalkicker at the time was Laurie Gilfedder .



I never remember Conroy going in the forwards due to work & family commitments which meant i lost touch with the game for the best part of 20 years .