I would have said the true architect of the Golden gen was Dean Bell. I loved the Dougie era though.

Doug was a great motivator style coach, with a talent scouts eye, those Widnes teams of the 80's were awesome and every bit as good if not better than the Wigan sides that over took them. I believe one of the reasons he came to Leeds was to be able to match Wigans financial clout, after they were cutting his junior supply lines to stem them. so he did indeed revamp our at the time awful junior development and pave the way for what was to come. we were unlucky not to win some silverware but to (and lost) lost 4 finals under him in about 4 seasons.

he was a great player as well often overshadowed in his era by the likes of Mal Reilly steve Norton phil lowe etc but was a world class international back row. Gb captain, (think ashes and works cup winner as well)

Sir Greg
Dougie limited as a coach?
Best of his era IMO

Did he actually coach the team? Wasn’t the suggestion at the time that Ellery was doing most of the coaching and Doug used to just turn up once a week, put a video on for the players and then leave them to it?

This was a time when the “coach” was the manager.

I wish David Ward had been given the money that was made available to Dougie.

Paul Vautin's description of Alex Murphy's coaching is hilarious. All he knew about fitness was getting the squad doing laps, and apparently barely interacted during training unless the press turned up, and he's suddenly get involved. While the Aussies have more and better athletes, one reason for our relative decline in the 70s and 80s was the standard of coaching. Crazy because we previously had coaches like Roy Francis who were way ahead of their time.

He was brilliant at picking players and players wanted to play for him, I was meaning limited in technical coaching but it was a different era, and he was unlucky in that in those later years he was up against that Wigan super team, albeit I think they were far better coached.

I was one of his signings.......for his central heating company. Lasted 2 weeks, rubbish job.

Schofield didn't reckon much to Dougie according to his biography. It's no wonder Leeds won nothing with that level of dysfunction going on behind the scenes.

IIRC Schofield was battling to keep his 'clique' in the team on top over that of Hanley and the Dougie signings. Dougie responded by basically getting rid of all Schofield's mates in the seasons that followed. At the same time you had the likes of Bobbie Goulding trashing Dougie's car (no wonder he didn't stay long, despite the obvious talent).