Top players, poor teams: Eight greats suffering the curse of Tuivasa-Sheck

Some of the best names in sport didn’t win much silverware because they played for the wrong sides. The Warriors captain is in danger of being one of them, writes David Long.

If the Warriors have another bad season in 2021, Roger TuivasaSheck could find himself on an unwanted list of sporting stars who never won as much silverware as they should have, because they played for poor teams.

Tuivasa-Sheck did win the Premiership with the Roosters in 2013, his first full year in the NRL, but since, all he’s had to celebrate have been individual honours and a couple of Minor Premierships with the Roosters.

Over his time at the Warriors, the club have finished the season 10th, 13th, eighth, 13th and 10th. For a player of Tuivasa-Sheck’s talent, that’s scant reward, and he could bow out of league later this year as another sporting star who didn’t win as much as he should have.

Here are others who suffered from being a great player in a poor team.

BRIAN LARA Cricket

March 7, 2021

One of the greatest batsmen of all time, the Trinidadian holds the world record for the highest score in first-class cricket, with a knock of 501 not out for Warwickshire in 1994. He also holds the record for the highest score in test cricket, 400 not out, against England in 2004.

However, Lara’s career coincided with a decline of West Indian cricket that it still hasn’t recovered from and in some ways, the fall has been so dramatic, that results during Lara’s time don’t look as bad as current series defeats.

When Lara made his test debut, against Pakistan in 1990, he played alongside Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes, Richie Richardson, Malcom Marshall, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh.

By the time he played his last test, 16 years later and again against Pakistan, Chris Gayle and Shivnarine Chanderpaul were the only other world-class players in the team.

As cricket is intrinsically a team sport played by individuals, Lara’s achievements still stand out, but the West Indies won only 32 of the 132 test matches he played in and he never appeared in a World Cup final.

JOHNNY HAYNES Football

Johnny Haynes was the epitome of the one-club player and the one of the greatest of his generation. But the reason why he never won anything was because that club was Fulham.

Haynes made his debut for Fulham in 1952 and played his last game for them in 1970, racking up 594 appearances for the West London club.

He earned 56 caps for England, at a time when there was far less international football, and captained his country on 22 occasions.

In 1961 Haynes became the first British footballer to earn £100 a week, straight after the maximum wage of £20 was abolished, and Pele once said that he’d never seen a better passer of the ball than him.

Haynes turned down opportunities to go to Tottenham Hotspur and AC Milan, choosing to stick with Fulham even when they were relegated to the second division.

It seems remarkable these days, but he remained as England’s captain while playing in division two and was still with them when the club went down to the third tier.

During all of that time with

Fulham, he never came close to winning anything. He is a legend at at the club, where one of the stands at Craven Cottage is named after him, but away from the club he’s not remembered as well as he probably should be.

MIKE TROUT Baseball

By the time centre fielder Mike Trout retires, many expect him to be regarded as the greatest baseball player of all time.

Yet it’s debatable how many

sports fans in New Zealand have even heard of him, while in the States he doesn’t have anywhere near the profile that players like Mookie Betts, Bryce Harper, Jacob deGrom or Aaron Judge enjoy.

That’s partly due to the fact that Trout is a pretty unassuming guy, but also because he plays for the the Los Angeles Angels, who live in the shadows of the LA Dodgers.

While the Dodgers, who won the World Series last year, have a

Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, top left, is in good company for being a standout player with little silverware. Similarly ‘‘cursed’’ have been West Indies cricketer Brian Lara, main photo, and then, top row, Johnny Haynes and Mike Trout; middle row, Dan Marino, Sergio Parisse and Jhaniele Fowler; and bottom row, Bert Sutcliffe and Nathan Hindmarsh. roster filled with stars and regularly play post-season baseball, the Angels don’t have anyone anywhere near the level of Trout.

He is an eight-time MLB All Star, three-time American League MVP and has won the Silver Slugger award on seven occasions.

Yet the 29-year-old has played in the post season only once, in 2014, when the Angels were swept by the Royals.

In 2019, he signed a 12-year contract for US$426 million (NZ$538m), so don’t feel too sorry for him, but Trout looks destined to end his career as a rich man, but without any rings.

DAN MARINO NFL

Marino was the face of the NFL in the 1980s and over his career broke a stack of records, many of which he still holds today.

However, over his 17-year career with the Miami Dolphins, where he helped get them to the playoffs 10 times, he played in a Super Bowl only once.

That came in just his second season in the NFL, in January 2005, with the Dolphins losing heavily to the San Francisco 49ers, 38-16.

His final game was the ugly 62-7 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars in the 1999 divisional playoffs and he was replaced at quarterback early in the second half.

He retired the following year, turning down the offer to play for Minnesota Vikings, feeling proud that he spent his entire career with one team. Even if it wasn’t a very good one.

SERGIO PARISSE Rugby

Without a doubt one of the greatest rugby players of all time and also one of the coolest-looking and stylish.

Had he played for one of the top countries in the world, the Argentinian-born Italian No 8 would have won as many awards as the likes of Richie McCaw or Dan Carter, but even so was twice nominated as IRB player of the Year.

As a player, Parisse is an outstanding ball runner, with a superb offload, but too often for Italy he is on the losing side.

He has made 142 test appearances for Italy and is the only player to reach the century mark for test defeats, with 106.

‘‘Obviously I did not achieve a lot of wins in the Italy jersey but that doesn’t make me feel any less proud,’’ Parisse once said.

‘‘I have always hated defeat but that does not make me feel like a failure. I was not playing for New Zealand, so I knew there would be more defeats than victories, but as captain you have to set an example.

‘‘It is easier to captain a team when you are winning 80 per cent of the time, sure, but you stay positive.’’

JHANIELE FOWLER Netball

The 31-year-old Jamaican is a goal-scoring freak and whichever team she’s playing against, their first priority when drawing up a game plan is trying to stop her.

But that’s easier said than done. In the 2018 Australian Super Netball season she scored 783 goals in 15 games for the West Coast Fever, following that up with 709 the following year.

Prior to that, Fowler played for Southern Steel, scoring 3678 goals from 4020 attempts with an accuracy rate of 91.4 per cent over five seasons.

However, over all of that time she won just won title with the Steel and nothing with the Fever.

For Jamaica, she has picked up a couple of Commonwealth Games bronze medals. It is scant reward for a player who has dominated the netball world for the past decade.

BERT SUTCLIFFE Cricket

Bert Sutcliffe is one of New Zealand’s greatest-ever batsmen. He was the inaugural NZ Sportsman of the year, the NZ sportsperson of the decade for the 1940s, was among Wisden’s list of five cricketers of the year for 1950 and had an oval named after him.

But despite all of that, none of the 42 test matches he played in resulted in a win for New Zealand.

That was partly because the teams weren’t very good. Although in 1949, when New Zealand sent one of their strongest teams to England for a four-test series, they were all three-day tests and every one of them was drawn. England didn’t think New

Zealand were worthy of five-day tests back then.

When New Zealand won their first ever test, in 1956 (26 years after the first one), Sutcliffe was suffering from ill health after returning from the tour of Pakistan and India, so listened to it on the radio.

No one has ever played as many test matches without being on the winning team as Sutcliffe, yet he remains one of New Zealand’s most cherished players.

NATHAN HINDMARSH League

You don’t have to watch the Matty Johns Show for long to get a reminder that Nathan Hindmarsh never won a Premiership, as it’s one of the running gags in the excellent programme.

Seeing him these days, overweight and the butt of jokes, it’s easy to forget just how good Hindmarsh was as a player.

The dynamic second-rower played 17 times for New South Wales and for the Kangaroos on 23 occasions, where he achieved plenty of success.

But his 14-year career with the Eels, where he played 330 games, was littered with disappointments.

His career of close misses started in his first season with the club, in 1998, when in the Preliminary Final against the Bulldogs the Eels were up 18-2 with less than 10 minutes to go, but ended up losing 32-20.

The Eels again lost in the Preliminary Final the following two years, then went down in the Grand Final to the Knights in 2001.

Parramatta lost in the Preliminary Final again in 2005 and 2007, while in 2009 they lost in the Grand Final to the Storm, a defeat that famously had Hindmarsh in tears.

The Storm were subsequently stripped of the title for salary cap breaches, but the Eels weren’t awarded the title in their place.

So Hindmarsh goes down in NRL folklore as one of the biggest, but loveable losers.