Probably because Lyon won trophies with us, including MoS (Roby didn't deserve it yadda yadda) and didn't decide he'd had enough and go home early.

Barrett was very good in his first year, but even this board was criticising him in his second (" if he can't be bothered he should go home now" etc). I'm probably also swayed by the fact he was pap against Saints for 2 years.

Good player, but a Wigan great? He's up against some stern competition there and doesn't come close for me.

Good luck to him in Origin though.

Lyon was hardly great against Wigan, DV owned him more often than not.

Does make you wonder about that second season though. http://www.sportinglife.com/rugbyleague/news/story_get.cgi?STORY_NAME=rleague/09/06/15/RUGBYL_Barrett.html

Does make you wonder about that second season though. http://www.sportinglife.com/rugbyleague/news/story_get.cgi?STORY_NAME=rleague/09/06/15/RUGBYL_Barrett.html

I imagine most of them won't even have heard of Meninga. But even the odd Saints fan that has heard of him won't rate him.

Meninga was arguably the most complete RL player ever (and certainly the best player I've seen in c.25 years of watching the game), but that's irrelevant. His power, pace and brilliant hands count for nothing. It was pre-SL, you see. Apparently they were all amateurs back then, unfit and pretty useless all-round compared with today's Soopah Doopah "athletes".

What does an Aussie coming over here for one season have to do with the standard of British RL?

The seasons didn't overlap then and playing over here didn't preclude you from playing for Australia.

Under the same conditions I'm sure we'd see the likes of Inglis (who looks as dominant a centre in the Aussie competition as Meninga did and may even go on to better him) and Slater over here for off season cash. But guess what? GB would still get smashed until we did something about the intensity of the league and the juniors we develop.

Barrett isnt and never will be a wigan great. hes a great player who played for wigan but thats something entirely different

well put

Barrett should do well......hes pretty good at making an average/ poor team look good on his own and giving them half a chance as we all know!

Not the best 6 in comp by a long way, NSW are going to struggle. NSW are not a poor team just no where near as good as the Maroons, Barrett isnt going to be able to make them look good at all.

I agree, great player but not here long enough to become a legend. He was IMO excellent for us both seasons and yes including the 2nd.

In his second season what happened there was IMO that teams were able to do to Barrett what they do to Hock now. That is gang up on our most effective player because they knew we have not got anyone else they needed to worry about! They could afford to commit numbers against him because no one else was much of a threat elsewhere on the pitch. Stop Barrett, stop Wigan. It's the same now, stop Hock, stop Wigan.

Dave