who would you rather have in the P&B no.1 jersey...?

Lee Penny hands down!

Say one thing bout Lee Penny he didnt drop much ball,there again he never passed much ball!!!!
On back slapping and shear will to win or succseed,i would have to say mathers far better team player and he could read the game better!neither was blessed with the greatest of pace neither were stand out players for warrington!!Not many on here will remember Lee penny in fact i am suprised no-one has said dont you mean Kev Penny !!Not going to call either player as they have played the game at a level that i hav nt..
i would say mathers just by a whisker going on that performance in the 2010 cc,its a petty that he saved his best game for warrington as his last!!!

Lee Penny . With his Four tries against Leeds.

Lee Penny looked the real deal when he broke through into the first team. I thought he was actually quite quick but I think he lacked vision and creativilty although was pretty solid in defence as I recall with great upper body strength.

Mathers has (despite what Wigan fans might think) a pretty good rugby brain, its just he had his 'moments' and they were normally high profile howlers (like the one at the DW with his forward roll over the ball), but as someone else pointed out, he is a good team player. He also put out some pretty good cut-out passes that led to tries.

In my ideal world neither would feature as an automatic first choice but both gave us good service for different reasons. On balance, I think I would pick Penny but its close.

penny because of his ironic use of the dummy pass.

He also put out a lot of dodgy cut-out passes as well, the one which almost gifted Pat Richards a try in the 2009 semi final at Widnes, i think that would have put Wigan 14-0 ahead and i doubt we would have come back from that.

I think it was one of his dodgy cut-out passes that lead to Leroy Cudjoe racing away in the game where we got knocked out of the play offs last season, we still had time a chance to win that game and that pass was never on. We needed a converted try so he should have been putting the ball back towards the sticks and not right out into the corner.

Mathers is a great fullback on his day as per his wembley performance last year, he would have got the Lance Todd in most years for that kind of performance.

Anyway back to the debate. Lee Penny for me, he was the better and more solid all round fullback, he very rarely made mistakes, he supported the line well and weighed in with his fair share of tries. His only slight fault was he tended to keep hold of the ball for too long instead of passing to support players.

P.S... I thought Brian Johnson would have been included in a debate about some of our past fullbacks, he gets my vote all day long.

Penny was at the end of his career when I started watching so I can't quite form an opinion. One thing I do remember is that switch pass to him of every bloody scrum!

There wouldn't be much debate because Johnson was better than all of the other fullbacks since the 1980s at least, so would have to go a long way back to find someone worth a debate. I'm choosing players that are roughly equal so opinions will be split.

Yet strangely Paul Ford was selected in front of him for the 1986 Premiership Final. I can't remember but I can only presume that Johnno was returning from injury.

The Penny move.

To be fair, it was a tactical move which meant that on our next tackle the hooker/halves had options left and right. But of course you already knew that



Looking back, Penny was a pretty solid fullback, I don't ever remember him dropping much high ball, and generally his positioning was good. Aside from the 1993/94 season we were very average during his time with us - he might have played just as well as Mathers did in the Challenge Cup final, but we hardly ever competed in the big games in those days.