Quote ricominciare="ricominciare"Cheers for jogging my memory, I remember now Appo was out of condition on his return and his form didn't carry on, am I right in that he was wanted to play fullback by Cullen but he wasn't having it hence his poor condition/attitude, in truth I think Appo would have been as much a waste at fullback as would Briers, we had two players for one position but on the previous seasons form I feel Appo deserved the spot and may have returned in a better condition, it would then have been there for Briers to regain it.'"
When Appo played 6 he got his hands on the ball a lot and he was an explosive runner who could make breaks. However he was not a great kicker or passer and he would not organise a team, whereas Briers was all three of those. The other halfback at the time was Nat Wood who was also more of a running halfback which was a good foil for Briers but pairing Wood and Appo meant we lacked something.
During that run in to the playoffs in 2003, when Appo played himself in to the Dream Team, it was basically about smashing weaker teams. Appo got a hat-trick against Wakefield in the last game at Wilderspool, he got 4 tries against Halifax who got relegated with 0 points, we beat lower ranked teams but we didn't take down any of the top sides. That was always going to be the difficulty if we played even a fully fit focused Appo at 6 ahead of Briers, against the top sides we needed a more elite halfback not just an explosive runner who could do damage against weaker defences.
I think the best place for Appo was fullback but he could be frustrating there. I have a memory of Appo playing for Huddersfield against us at Wilderspool when he first came over (Tony Smith brought him to the UK when he was Hudds coach). He was playing fullback and I remember he had a complete lack of urgency when we kicked to him. He ambled about to the ball looking like he didn't care whether anyone was chasing or not. I thought, this fullback is garbage, just put a kick in behind him and you can pin him on his line. Then we kicked straight to him and he had a bit of open field and he skinned the first man and broke 40 yards upfield in no time. It was like watching one of those NFL special teams returners flying past everybody. I don't remember much else from him that game though.
I have one other strange memory of Appo as he made one of the two most memorable demonstratons of pace I ever saw at Wilderspool. One was Henare going the length down the touchline from a scrum near our own line when Sculthorpe got the ball out of a scrum and Henare just burned straight like an arrow 90 yards. The other - possibly even more impressive, was when Alan Hunte did a similar move against us for Salford and scored...but Appo, who was on the other wing, incredibly nearly chased him down across the diagonal of the pitch and was virtually level by the time Hunte scored. Given that Hunte was quick, to run him down across the diagonal like that where he must have had to run an extra 10 or 15 yards was unbelievable. I remember seeing the replay on TV from the high angle camera, it was like seeing a greyhound bounding across the pitch coming out of nowhere.
Graham Appo - often looked like he didn't care but when he was fit and in the mood he was a phenomenal runner.
