Good grief that's looking impressive, Nothing!
I was indeed a soldier, mate. Way back in a previous life. I was lucky, or unlucky enough to be serving at the time the British Army transitioned from the SLR to the SA-80 so had experience of them both.
When it was first issued, the SA-80 was a bag of garbage. It fell to pieces in your hands, cooked rounds off when hot even with the safety on and suffered with stoppages. It's always been very accurate, though. After at least one rolling recall for modifications it became an awesome weapon. Having being used to the SLR, the main thing most of we original users of the SA-80 didn't like was the lack of stopping power of the 5.56 round as against the 7.62 the old SLR used. It was more complicated to field strip than the SLR, too.