'Immortals' or choose your best Prem side.

BT have been doing a choice of team of the last 2 decades (since the 1st prem final). As the season winds down I thought I'd post Dallaglio's, obviously a hugely respected pundit who like Woodward doesn't merely lean on winning the WC once. Important that he led with saying in his day they had to play all the games in the prem and internations unlike the guys these days and that he went purely on prem game performance. Longevity, tough, good bloke, winning trophies (and bias of playing with them) were his reasons.

His team:

Ayerza Brits Green

Johnson Shaw

Worsley Back

Dallaglio (yes he did pick himself even though told he counldn't)

Wigglesworth Hodgson

Cueto  Barritt Waters Ashton
Murpy.


Not as crazy as I expected tbh, wouldn't be my side but a bit of crossover.

I think he's got a point with quite a number of those players. Not sure Dayglo would make my side though.

Ayerza, Brits, Hayman or Castro
Johnson, Itoje
Croft, Back, Easter
Wigglesworth, Evans
?, ?
A Tuilagi, Murphy, Ashton

There might have been better scrum halfs than Wigglesworth but he does hold the record for most appearances and has won the title with three different clubs. Similar with Ashton and his try scoring exploits plus the title at two clubs.

Struggling on the centres. Might have to come back to them.

Ugo Monye’s Immortals XV: 15. Alex Goode; 14. Chris Ashton; 13. Fraser Waters, 12. Brad Barritt, 11. Alesana Tuilagi; 10. Owen Farrell, 9. Danny Care; 1. Marcos Ayerza, 2. Schalk Brits, 3. Dan Cole, 4. Martin Johnson, 5. Maro Itoje, 6. Joe Worsley, 7. Chris Robshaw, 8. Lawrence Dallaglio.

And Healey just invented some additional rules for himself so comfortably the worst side. (rugby pass):

“This is a real opportunity,” he began. “Obviously, you have got to have a criteria to pick it and my main criteria was players that I played with. You don’t get to do this very often, it’s hypothetical. Most people would have shot my team down anyway. I was on a hiding to nothing, so what I did was I just picked the whole Leicester team that I played with.


“It makes perfect sense. They won four titles, most of them are great blokes and I understand everything about them… there will be criticisms for this, but my aim was to get as many of my mates into that Immortals team as possible and almost all have got a valid case.

“People will realise what a great team I have selected. You only get one chance to pick the Immortals team, so why would I want to pick a load of people I never played with? They’re very versatile, dynamic, strong, fast!”
Healey went on to steadfastly defend his selection approach, naming a team that included usual suspects such as Martin Johnson, Neil Back and Geordan Murphy. But he will surely raise eyebrows regarding how he picked himself at No9, chose Andy Goode as his No10 and included a largely unrecognisable name at No11 instead of Alesana Tuilagi.

Here is how he explained some of his choices, beginning with loosehead. “I have picked Graham Rowntree because he was probably ahead of his time. He was completely nuts, ran around the field just hitting ruck after ruck. I used to call him Shaun Edwards because in training he thought he was Shaun Edwards, the rugby league star, playing first receiver, distributing the ball, but he was an absolute rock in the pack.


“Didn’t go to the World Cup, probably wrongly so, but lots of appearances and wins. That is the key thing here, this team’s win ratio is better than every other hypothetical Immortals team that will be selected over the course of these TV shows.”

Darren Garforth was Healey’s tighthead prop, with good reason. “In my first game for Leicester, his job was always to ruck and I went into a ruck and he came in and stamped on me and told me, ‘That is my job, get out of the ruck, I’ll look after you out there’, so I listened to him for the rest of my career and didn’t go near any of those areas.”

As regards Johnson at No4, Healey reckoned: “One of his key attributes was his ability to run. His mum was an ultra-marathon runner, he used to go training with her. He had a phenomenal engine. He had one pace, it was average speed, but he didn’t stop. He’d start the game running at that speed, and he would finish the game running at that pace and that is why he had so many impacts on the game, both physical and mental in a lot of ways.

“He was very pragmatic, very sarcastic, less so in the changing room, but he just dealt with black and white. He eliminated all the grey which is what great leaders do and he enabled the team to focus on what was really important, which was getting the ball to me.”


Healey went on to tell an amusing in-between-pubs story about Martin Corry, his No8. “Nobody knows but he was the England captain and an absolute rock. Mentally one of the strongest individuals you will ever come across. On my stag-do, we arrived back at Newcastle train station after being out on an afternoon at Whitley Bay and I bet him a pound that he couldn’t do a forward roll all the way to the Quayside.

“He did 400 forward rolls to the Quayside, put his hand out and went, ‘Where’s my pound?’ I gave him his pound, he went thanks and we went into the pub. So mentally, very, very strong. Never took a backward step ever. I remember a little bit of a punch-up with another guy I could have picked, Lawrence Dallaglio, and Martin won that fight.

“He just stood in and just hit him repeatedly and we all stood back because he didn’t need any help. That is the reason why I didn’t pick Lawrence because if it came down to a scrap, he didn’t really have it in his locker.”

Healey had no issues naming himself as his Immortals XV scrum-half. “A lot of people say, ‘I’m not going to pick myself’ but if you are the best player you should pick yourself and I was the best player in any one of those positions and we got four titles two Heineken Cups off the back of it. You will admit if you look at that pack, it’s a great pack but without the magic behind it it’s not winning titles… modesty is largely overrated. That is why I went for myself.”

Next came Goode at out-half. “I actually loved playing nine and 10 with him. He was a very intuitive player, fantastic right foot, he controlled proceedings, he attacked the line, he never took a backward step physically, people commented on his shape but he did what he needed to do every time you put it in front of him…

“I used to know I would get to the breakdown and fling out a pass and he would always be there. He would know where the ball was going to. He has got a brilliant rugby brain and he knew how to use it.”

Healey went on to reveal the menace of the bed-flipping Leon Lloyd, his No13, a habit that at one stage injured Healey and ruled him out of a Leicester match against Leinster. “You’d go in for a little afternoon nap on top of the bed and then he would come in and basically flip the bed and you would end up awake with the bed on top of you.”

The most eye-raising Healey selection, however, was left wing Winston Stanley. “A lot of people won’t know this guy. I only played with him for a couple of seasons… this guy came out of nowhere and whenever you got the ball to him, he scored. He was unbelievably quick and really elusive quick. You could argue this team by itself won two titles and then he arrived and we won two more and two European Cups. He might have been the missing link that took us to the next stage.”

Austin Healey’s Immortals XV: 15. Tim Stimpson; 14. Geordan Murphy; 13. Leon Lloyd, 12. Will Greenwood, 11. Winston Stanley; 10. Andy Goode, 9. Austin Healey; 1. Graham Rowntree, 2. Dorian West, 3. Darren Garforth, 4. Martin Johnson, 5. Ben Kay, 6. Lewis Moody, 7. Neil Back, 8. Martin Corry.

To be fair Austin's team would probably better Monye's. That was pretty much side that won back to back Heineken Cup and Prem titles.

Monye's is really quite boring. Particularly that 10/12/13 combination.

Then he would have had the cojones to say it's the best team rather than just play the fool.

No 7&1/2 wrote:Then he would have had the cojones to say it's the best team rather than just play the fool.

You're expecting Austin not to talk rubbish now? Wow, that's optimisic. He makes a good point every now then but it's normally embedded in a long flow of him talking for the sake of it.

True enough. Its a shame in a way as he knows in general what he's talking about. He has made it his usp though.

Every Premiership 'Immortals' team starts and ends with Andy Goode at 10.

Respect for Cueto and Ashton but Alex Tuilagi was just a flippin wrecking ball of a player...and for LD to not select him...... craziness.

Genuinely up there with Inga for me as one of the best ever.

Geordie wrote:Respect for Cueto and Ashton but Alex Tuilagi was just a flippin wrecking ball of a player...and for LD to not select him...... craziness.

Genuinely up there with Inga for me as one of the best ever.

Agree, Alex Tuilagi was terrific. Wasn't there a player in the Premiership he used to truck regularly? Or maybe just had a few really good highlights running thorough the game guy?

He ran through everyone Doc...

Him and his pal the late Seru Rabeni....

Geordie wrote:He ran through everyone Doc...

Him and his pal the late Seru Rabeni....

That's really true with a little black and blue, but I think I recall him having a special tackling dummy in one of the other teams.  Could be wrong,  I think I remember him having a collision with Samu Manoa (might have been Mooj) which broke the Richter scale.  

That Tigers team was stacked.  By the way, who was Tuilagi's out half?