After seeing the 2012 semi on facebook it got me thinking about players who were underrated (and even harshly criticized) by fans.

Trent Waterhouse is a name I'll throw into the ring.

Grix spent most of his career underrated but was well rated eventually by the wire faithful. The rest of the league never seemed to get it though. Harrison was pretty underrated looking back. I agree with Waterhouse, I think we expected too much really when he came over and didn't appreciate what he did bring. I also think given how we look shy a proper big lad in the pack carvell probably didn't get enough praise at the time.

Toby King is underrated by a lot of our supporters now IMO.

I was thinking about this myself the other day after watching the semi aswell, I forgot how much work Ben Harrison got through. Tackle after Tackle and never shied away from taking a drive forward. For his work rate alone i'd proberbly pick him. Played for England aswell which makes the way we seeminingly just F'd him off for no apparent reason even more bizzarre

I must admit to not being Waterhouse's biggest fan at the time probably based on my expectation rather than what he was actually doing on the field. A player that rarely, if ever gets any plaudits from that same team is Chris Riley. He's not a Monaghan or Hicks but don't think he ever let us down, quite happy to put his body on the proverbial line for a 'small' guy and not a bad strike rate.

Chris Bridge.

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

Michael Eagar and Mike Forshaw - only spent a season with us but were impressive while here.

Danny Nutley was superb for us without getting much credit, signed for Cronulla and played State of Origin.

Brent Grose in his first few seasons was one of the better outside backs in SL without getting much fanfare. Tailed off in his last couple of years though.

Jon Clarke for a period in his later career was underrated. He'd been around a long time so everyone's opinions on him were probably fixed: fit athlete, hard worker, limited player. But for a season or two he was one of the top players in the league.

Chris Leikvoll was good too. He was like a throwback to the 80s props. He was a big man with good hands who had his head up looking to offload and be creative rather than just doing hit ups. He played in an era where everyone had moved to battering ram props that they would rotate on and off the field with the interchange, so through that lens, Leikvoll was seen as slow and lumbering but he was a good player, I'd have liked to see him play in TS squad later as I think he could have been effective like Solomona.

Hard to disagree with a word of that, UR.
I never got the "love in" for Waterhouse. Don't get me wrong, nowt wrong with the fella, he was just Gary Sanderson (again, nowt wrong with him), but imported on a Aussie International's payrate.

My underrated guy goes to Paul Wood.
When we saw peak Morley and Carvell, Wood often got forgotten about. What I saw on last night's screening of the semi from 12, showed another good outing for him.
Some balls to that fella....well, he did have


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Wood was good for a long time. In the pre-TS era we were an inconsistent team and had a lot of players whose form went up and down, Wood was probably our most reliable performer every week over that decade. I think he's the Academy product that has given us the most over a full career since Mike Gregory.

I can't believe anyone didn't rate warehouse when he was playing for us. The bloke was immense! I still cringe thinking about that thread on here where the majority of fans wanted us to swap him with Danny kirmond!!!
If he and hodgson had played in that 2013 grand final we would not still be getting mocked with always your year chants.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 [ije ne sais quoi[/i from him, as he came with a big reputation.

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.

Matt Davis, Jason Clark are players that are steady and never let you down. Waterhouse was well above that level. He probably was in 3rd/4th gear for us but he was very, very good. Louis was also very good, really good big game player as well.

Riley is probably the best call for underrated player, he played consistently at a very high standard.

Yeah when Vinnie first joined Saints, I remember watching his early performances and thinking he was a rare talent. He was big and powerful and had great hands. I thought they might have found another super star who would torment everyone else for years. So when we signed him, I was pleased, although he seemed to be more of a squad player for Saints rather than first choice.

I felt the same as you about Vinnie. He was OK but didn't live up to my hopes. Considering his physical talents, I was surprised he wasn't a difference maker more often.

I think this was a common factor with a lot of Cullen signings. He didn't sign a lot of total busts but he signed a lot of players who were OK without living up to what we had hoped when we signed them: Vinnie Anderson, Swann, Rauhihi, Reardon, Parker, Cardiss. Matt King and Michael Monaghan fit that category too during the time Cullen was still coach.

How about Darren Burns for an underrated player, maybe not from Wire fans but around the league in general.

Who do you think was better for us, Burns or Waterhouse?

Not wishing to devalue the contribution from Louis Anderson, but we'll never know how Swann would have performed had he been in a pack with Morley and Carvell as starting props, and Tony Smith as coach.
The circumstances of when Swann and Anderson played were very different.

I don’t think J Clark was under rated last season, he was one of those overseas players that maybe are better able to be judged after 2 seasons, a bit like Matt King.