Quote ="sally cinnamon"A victim of his own inability to do anything more than sporadically influence games. I'm not ignoring his ability to break games from time to time, but top quality playmakers take hold of games and dictate them week in week out, Briers has never done that, he's always been a player who can come up with the odd good play and the odd good game. If he had been Australian he would have pottered around first grade for a few seasons then come over to England, the only reason he was so highly rated over here is because of the lack of decent halfbacks and stand offs, which meant in the context of what we had, Briers was one of the better options around.
The frustrating part is he obviously had the raw materials to be top quality, he could kick, pass and step, there was just something missing, which is why a succession of international coaches overlooked him and he never got signed by a top club.'"
What has really grated at me is that he looks happy in his own little comfort zone. You sort of get the impression that if he truly commited himself to training and bought into the professional ethos, he could've been so much better.
Briers has always struck me as the last of the part-time, pub generation in the first of the full-time, Sport Science generation. If he'd been playing in the 80s, we'd be sat here now, I feel, lauding him as good as Gregory, but he seemed content going for his 'crafty cig' while the rest of the team were being flogged in the gym, which is an attitude I feel has let him down during his career.
