Quote ="sally cinnamon"OK to distract from going off topic with talk about Saints fans, how about this one:
Of all the big gun players that we lost around 2013-14, the only one that we really replaced with a top notch ambitious signing was Michael Monaghan, bringing in Clark when he was already Man of Steel at 21 years of age.
So how does he square up now to his illustrious predecessor Monaghan....
This is a high bar, as I think Monaghan was our best individual player of the triple Challenge Cup era, but Clark still compares well to him. I think he's a more complete player. Monaghan was a superb player who was most effective played at hooker. Clark feels like a true traditional hooker. I always think a team feels more healthy when it has real class at hooker and we have that now. Given his age, if we can keep him in the long term I think Clark can make an even bigger contribution than Monaghan did.
The one thing where I think Monaghan was ahead of him, was that he was better at setting off moves in the final third/quarter of the pitch that led to us scoring. I always fancied him in the danger areas of the pitch, to make a killer decision that broke the defence. Clark, not so much. I think what the team is missing at the moment is that player who can get us finishing off plays. In the time I've watched Warrington we have had four players who really did that: Davies, Langer, Briers and Monaghan. When we had two of them at the same time we won trophies.'"
Good post. It's telling that, as we love a good moan on here, we rarely if ever talk about our hooker. Over the past couple of years we've bemoaned our wingers, halfbacks, pack, coaches, our fans, other fans, but rarely, if ever, our hookers.
I would possibly add that another thing I loved about Monas was his kicking game (granted this is not a common skill for a hooker to posses). I seem to remember one season he kicked the most 40/20s in the league.
Always super valuable to have a couple of other options with the boot in open play.
