Sport's Greatest Captain

[Ironside]

Willie Miller , how on earth he managed to get a team of journeyman pros to win the cup winners cup and the super cup I have no idea

Not entirely sure that Aberdeen team was full of journeymen!  Half the team were mainstays in Scotland's last great national team which routinely got to WC finals.  Also there was the little factor of a super hungry Sir Alex.

Good shout though.  All my family are from Aberdeen and they have always been my Scottish team.  Been to Pitt numerous times on summer holidays as a kid just after the era you were talking about.

leighton, mcleish, miller and strachan were the only 4 players in that team/squad that went on to get more that half a dozen caps
the rest were kept out by players in the old English 1st division and the old firm players

so i would call them journeymen and a great team gelled together by a great manager and captain

Willie Miller , how on earth he managed to get a team of journeyman pros to win the cup winners cup and the super cup I have no idea

Not entirely sure that Aberdeen team was full of journeymen!  Half the team were mainstays in Scotland's last great national team which routinely got to WC finals.  Also there was the little factor of a super hungry Sir Alex. 

Good shout though.

Billy McNeill >>>>> willie Miller.

players around billy mcneil were of a much higher standard than the standard around willie

[celtic]

17 years apart, how do you know they were not as good? How do you know the inter team was terrible compared to the real team? Or vice versa.

[Ironside]

17 years apart, how do you know they were not as good? How do you know the inter team was terrible compared to the real team? Or vice versa.

my mistake i thought the celtic team had more caps,

but FFS you had willie wallace in your team you think you could lose?

[bobby1]

Douglas Jardine for me.

Analysis of the opposition way ahead of its's time and picked a team to follow the game plan he had hatched and not the 'best' cricketers at the time. Found a weakness in Donald Bradman which must have been difficult and even when things escalated beyond things he could control he stuck to his plan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodyline

Says at the bottom of this Wiki page that in 2004 this series was still voted the most important event in cricket history.

[celtic]

Caps don't really come into it. If you look at some of the amount of caps Celtic players got throughout the years, some of them are incredibly low, given how good the players were.

[Longy]

Mike Brearly was a way better captain than he was a cricketer.

Does that qualify?

Was going to put Brearly also, top class captain.

Brearly was the first person who came to mind when I saw this thread. Everything I have heard was that he was amazing man manager, think the quote is that " he had a degree in people", he should never have got beyond county cricket on his ability with the bat.

[david3103]

Mike Brearly was a way better captain than he was a cricketer.

Does that qualify?

Was going to put Brearly also, top class captain.

Brearly was the first person who came to mind when I saw this thread. Everything I have heard was that he was amazing man manager, think the quote is that " he had a degree in people", he should never have got beyond county cricket on his ability with the bat.

Not universally popular with his players though. Tuffnell was reported as finding it better to get to his bowling mark by walking backwards to ensure that Brearley didn't change the field.
Gets votes for one quite incredible Ashes series.

[Longy]

Mike Brearly was a way better captain than he was a cricketer.

Does that qualify?

Was going to put Brearly also, top class captain.

Brearly was the first person who came to mind when I saw this thread. Everything I have heard was that he was amazing man manager, think the quote is that " he had a degree in people", he should never have got beyond county cricket on his ability with the bat.

Not universally popular with his players though. Tuffnell was reported as finding it better to get to his bowling mark by walking backwards to ensure that Brearley didn't change the field.
Gets votes for one quite incredible Ashes series.

Tufnell? Surely there careers never overlapped.

[arbboy]

Mike Brearly was a way better captain than he was a cricketer.

Does that qualify?

Was going to put Brearly also, top class captain.

Brearly was the first person who came to mind when I saw this thread. Everything I have heard was that he was amazing man manager, think the quote is that " he had a degree in people", he should never have got beyond county cricket on his ability with the bat.

Not universally popular with his players though. Tuffnell was reported as finding it better to get to his bowling mark by walking backwards to ensure that Brearley didn't change the field.
Gets votes for one quite incredible Ashes series.

Tufnell? Surely there careers never overlapped.

no chance unless they both appeared in question of sport!

Was closer than I thought. Brearley retired in 1993 tuff started for Middlesex in 1996.

[The Camel]

I think I've said this before, but captaincy skills are way overrated in all sports except cricket.

To compare any football captain with Brearly, Vaughan, Ponting, Lloyd or Richards is ridiculous.

[AndrewT]

It was Phil Edmonds, not Tufnell.

[TheDazzler]

I think I've said this before, but captaincy skills are way overrated in all sports except cricket.

To compare any football captain with Brearly, Vaughan, Ponting, Lloyd or Richards is ridiculous.

Ryder Cup captaincy?
Although it's just a term really. RC captaincy is more a management role than an on field captaincy role, I guess?

[Karabiner]

I think I've said this before, but captaincy skills are way overrated in all sports except cricket.

To compare any football captain with Brearly, Vaughan, Ponting, Lloyd or Richards is ridiculous.

Ryder Cup captaincy?
Although it's just a term really. RC captaincy is more a management role than an on field captaincy role, I guess?

I think the worst Ryder Cup captains are more memorable than the good ones.

Hal Sutton was easily the worst US captain in most people's opinion, passing the buck on picking pairings by putting the highest ranked players together down the card.

Nick Faldo was pretty poor for Europe too electing to have no vice-captains.

[baldock92]

Immediately thought of Martin Johnson when I saw the title to this thread, and I'm not even keen on the sport.

[George2Loose]

I captained the blonde team to victory in the APAT team championships a couple of years ago. Don't think that can ever be topped