Moore, who is a regular panellist on Fox League’s NRL 360 and Queenslanders Only shows, played 211 games for the Bears between 1989-99, as well as 17 State of Origins for Queensland between 1992-97. He is perhaps best-known for being captured on camera screaming “Queenslander” while thundering down the players’ tunnel prior to the second half of Game One of the 1995 State of Origin series. Apart from owning a world-renown pizza restaurant, Augello’s, on the beachfront at Mooloolaba in Queensland, he is also a very keen student of the modern game. Here, the brutally tough backrower highlights the modern positon-specific nature of today’s NRL gameplay, as well as a decreased reliance on endurance for modern players, as the biggest changes he notices between the two eras.

POSITIONAL PLAY

“Today’s players seem five kilos heavier, a couple of metres faster and a bit more powerful,” Moore shared with Inside Sport. “They are a lot more position-savvy as far as: ‘this is your role, this is where you stay, this is your part of the field. That’s your channel, that’s your corridor, you stay in that area.’

“Whereas, we had more of a blank canvas; a lot of players had roles where we would be anywhere on the field at any one time. For me, I swept from side to side – ran around like a chook with its head cut off.

“I was the classic example of a loose forward – I could be anywhere I wanted, in both attack and defence. I’d usually defend on the long side. I’d sweep from one side of the field to the other, getting into position.”

How would Tyson Frizell and his modern peers handle Billy's era? (Photo by Getty Images)

ENDURANCE

While appreciating the brutality and physical demands of the modern game, Moore sees recent reductions in interchange allowances as the perfect way of increasing endurance demands on players and as a result, letting the smaller, creative players back into a game these days dominated by behemoths.

“I reckon today’s players, they are a lot more powerful,” Moore shared with Inside Sport. “But they don’t have the endurance base we had back when I played. We never had interchange: when you came off, you stayed off. You played 80 minutes every week.

“In saying that, over the past few years the game has reduced the number of interchanges to try and bring back that endurance side of the game, which is great. For someone who was basically that way inclined, yes, the game is about skill and speed, about power, but it’s also about endurance.

“To have a player like a Gary Larsen or a Nathan Hindmarsh do something in the 79th minute which they’d do in the first minute, that’s pretty prestigious. That’s as good as throwing a 20-metre cut out pass, or a chip kick over the top and regather. So I think introducing the endurance base back into the game is a good thing. The more that happens the better it is for the game. It takes us away from the homogenisation where all the players are six-feet-two and weigh 105kg … It changes the body shapes a bit.

The more small blokes like Allan Langer we have in the game, the better. (Photo by Getty Images)

“What it also does is brings the little man back into the game. There’s nothing better than having an Allan Langer-type all of a sudden start stepping around the big forwards. It’s good to see the little man getting his moment in the sun.

“In my era, you were filthy if you got taken off. Obviously if you had a significant injury, so be it. But to be replaced was a bit of a stain on your game, so you wanted to stay on and play the whole time.

“At the peak of my career I was training with the great Johnny Lewis, in three or four extra training sessions on top of our team training. I knew at the back end of the game I was going to get you, because at some point you were going to get tired. All of a sudden that skill you got? That’s going to run out.

“Sure, I was tired, but I always banked on the fact you were more tired than I was. The first 60 minutes you were probably going to beat me up, because you were bigger and stronger than me, but at some point, you were going to run out of petrol.”

Sucking them in ... (Photo by Getty Images)