Re: Most underrated players for Wire in the SL era : Sun Apr 26, 2020 10:07 am  

Agree with Grix and Riley as being underrated/undervalued. I'd add Logan Swann, who new his way to the try line during the Cullen era.

Re: Most underrated players for Wire in the SL era : Sun Apr 26, 2020 11:51 am  

MorePlaymakersNeeded wrote:

I'd add Logan Swann, who new his way to the try line during the Cullen era.

That right edge at that time, was immense
Swan
Gleeson
Fa'afili

Re: Most underrated players for Wire in the SL era : Sun Apr 26, 2020 2:31 pm  

Not rating Waterhouse would make me question anyone's knowledge of RL...madness. I remember the ridiculous 'lazy' thread, someone wasn't watching his dummy runs, taking four into the tackle on every drive, great offloads and fantastic defence.

I know he wasnt underrated as such but watching the old games back reminds me of how good Atkins was in his pomp, brain farts aside...big game player.

Re: Most underrated players for Wire in the SL era : Sun Apr 26, 2020 3:25 pm  

In his day, Atkins was as good as any centre in the league. Been very difficult to replace, which shows you how good he was.

Re: Most underrated players for Wire in the SL era : Sun Apr 26, 2020 3:50 pm  

Atkins was very underappreciated by the wire faithful. My own dad is one of his detractors, the fact that he scored as many as he did would suggest to me that he was right to back himself so often. He scored a lot of tries that he had absolutely no right to score.

Re: Most underrated players for Wire in the SL era : Sun Apr 26, 2020 4:10 pm  

sally cinnamon wrote:

Riley for sure.

Usually fans have positive bias towards Warrington-born, Academy-produced talent and overhype the few that do come through. Riley never got much appreciation despite scoring a hundred odd tries, winning three Challenge Cups and holding down a place in our strongest team for decades. He never even got the hometown folk hero reputation that Mark Forster had. It felt like a lot of our fans didn't really think he was good enough and thought we could do better. You couldn't use the Fa'afili argument (he only got all those tries because of playing outside Gleeson) because most of the time he played outside Ryan Atkins, who everyone says never passed to his winger.

A few years before Riley emerged, we had Dean Gaskell, and it felt like the fans were always on his side, chanting 'Deano Deano' and willing him to make it, even though he never scored. Riley always scored tries but never had the same goodwill.

I wonder if some of it was because Kevin Penny emerged at a similar time, and most people would have preferred Penny because he was a more exciting prospect, but Riley won that selection battle as he was more consistent when Penny went through his flaky form. Possibly some fans thought that if we'd have persevered with Penny we'd have had a player with an extra yard of pace, and that Riley was like settling for the lesser option but I don't agree, Riley was better equipped to handle SL.

The other thing I really liked with Riley was he came back from being written off a couple of times. How often have we seen young players go through a bad spell of form, get dropped, sent out on loan and then their career disappears into the lower leagues. A narrative then often gets created around them that they were 'treated disgracefully' by whoever was coach at the time and they would have been a great if only we'd persevered with them. But that happened to Riley after we signed Joel Monaghan and he was sent off to Harlequins on loan, but he came back and won his place back in the team and was one of the top try scorers for the next couple of seasons. He also adapted to being moved from wing to fullback without fuss.

An excellent Wire winger

Very much agree. He got knocked down the pecking order a few times for not doing much of anything wrong. Remember one season he pushed his way back in at the latter end of perhaps the 2012 season? And scored us some absolutely crucial tries. I'll always remember him chasing Pat Richards down from the other end of the field after an intercept, catching him and having a good dig at bringing him down, unfortunately Richards was about a foot taller and rode the hit to get over but thats the kind of ethic I always saw from Riley.

Re: Most underrated players for Wire in the SL era : Sun Apr 26, 2020 7:15 pm  

MorePlaymakersNeeded wrote:

I'd add Logan Swann, who new his way to the try line during the Cullen era.

I wouldn't say he was underrated. He was a big name signing with a good reputation. In his first season he lived up to his reputation - part of a formidable right edge with Gleeson and Fa'afili like lefty says. Second season he faded away and when he left to go back to NZ I wasn't too disappointed.

I think its harder for blue chip signings to be underrated, unless they get an unwarranted amount of criticism (like Waterhouse).

Swann did have a good try scoring record for us, but overall in his two years he slightly underdelivered compared to what I was expecting.

Louis Anderson came with a similar background and reputation to Swann when he signed, but delivered a lot more overall.

Re: Most underrated players for Wire in the SL era : Sun Apr 26, 2020 7:17 pm  

CW8 wrote:

Atkins was very underappreciated by the wire faithful. My own dad is one of his detractors, the fact that he scored as many as he did would suggest to me that he was right to back himself so often. He scored a lot of tries that he had absolutely no right to score.

Atkins was a very good player but he did have spells where he was out of form, which attracted stick from the crowd. He was good at fighting his way back out of a slump though.

Re: Most underrated players for Wire in the SL era : Sun Apr 26, 2020 8:54 pm  

sally cinnamon wrote:

I wouldn't say he was underrated. He was a big name signing with a good reputation. In his first season he lived up to his reputation - part of a formidable right edge with Gleeson and Fa'afili like lefty says. Second season he faded away and when he left to go back to NZ I wasn't too disappointed.

I think its harder for blue chip signings to be underrated, unless they get an unwarranted amount of criticism (like Waterhouse).

Swann did have a good try scoring record for us, but overall in his two years he slightly underdelivered compared to what I was expecting.

Louis Anderson came with a similar background and reputation to Swann when he signed, but delivered a lot more overall.

Louis Anderson is a good call for an underrated one, sally

I wasn't expecting much from him, particularly when, in his interviews with the Guardian, his main motivation was to "play with his brother" rather than play for Warrington (or maybe that's the way I construed the article).
His brother (Vinnie) was another Waterhouse, for me. Never let us down, always put a shift in, but I was just expecting a little more je ne sais quoi from him, as he came with a big reputation.

Re: Most underrated players for Wire in the SL era : Sun Apr 26, 2020 9:11 pm  

I always head a feeling that Fa’afili was under rated by a lot of supporters. I don’t understand why Lineham doesn’t get any where near the level of praise that Josh Charnley does, but I guess it’s all in the eye of the beholder.