Players, hailed as world-class, join Warington and become really quite ordinary.
It began with Martin Gleeson and now Widdopp and Williams have joined.
It wasn't always so. Bobby Fulton, John Bevan and Jonathan Davies each maintained the reputation they arrived with.
Can't explain it.

Winning & losing money ? We do seem to have a negative effect on some players or is it our scouting department that is pointing out the wrong players to sign ?

Morley maintained performance.

Difference - by any criteria, regardless of who is assessing them, Davies, Bevan, Fulton [iwere[/i world class.

Williams, as yet, is not and never has been worthy of that tag. Aside from a couple of match winning drop goals he has done nothing of note in a wires shirt.

For me the club needs to clear everything Pre Tony Smith, he came in and slowed it down but I just feel there is still an element of that culture still at the club. Does not help with the “jobs for the boys” thing. Anyways that’s my thoughts got to give Powell time and he needs to clear the decks before he can make his own mark.

We made Andrew Johns look bang average. It takes a special kind of club to do that.

Powell has 3 years to change the culture so give him a bit of time.

He doesn't need 3 years to change the captain though, he could've done that by now. And that worries me.

This is the one curious decision made by DP, and one that's unfathomable.

He's explained his reasoning for it.

Would you have appointed Hughes as captain before the 2022 season began?

Not on what I saw in 2021 with his captaincy then, and even more so given how he played last season too.

Nope, I'm not arguing in favour of him, just saying I understand why he's chosen to keep him.

That being said, he brought holmes in as an on field leader, ive been somewhat underwhelmed with him so far, he's not setting an example so far.

It's going to take time to get DP's style of play, and to assemble the squad for him to deliver it. Hughes wouldn't make my starting 17, but I get he's contacted for 2022 and were stuck with him for this season. But I'm still struggling with why DP made him captain, that was a bad decision for me.

Is there a case for he never really wanted to leave Cas, he was quite open about his emotion of leaving and just maybe he is finding it hard to settle, just a thought.

Not sure this is fair on Gleeson. As a centre, his skill was turning 2 versus 2 situations into points. There were very few better than him at that, even during his time with us. That style of centre doesn’t often couple with doing the hard work. See Lyon, Gidley, Gaznier.

Compare with Atkins, who if given three 2 v2 situations would score one and waste two, but would carry the ball 150m a game and do a lot of work coming away from his own line.

The game is moving away from craft and guile in the search for seventeen 6ft, 100kg jack of all trades, but I would love to see genuine class centres who can create like Gleeson without comparing stats on meters/busts.

That said, the club becoming a graveyard for the careers of halfbacks is concerning. This is, in my opinion, down to having a pathetic front row. We have undervalued our pack for years. It was Hill and “X” for years. Sims did a good job of steadying alongside Hill, the rest of the pack were awful. Then it was Hill and Cooper. All the while having a 2 man pack. This isn’t a new thing, it’s been like this since Morley/Carvell/Wood left. In that time we’ve invested in Sandow, Gidley, Brown, Roberts, Austin, Widdop and Williams all on HUGE money but are somehow surprised when another one doesn’t succeed without fixing the problem, which is that we have Cooper and a bunch of cardboard cutouts in the pack. It’s insanity.

Good props are hard to come by, but the game is so difficult without them.

He gets a free 12 months here, it's more an assessment of the squad he's inherited

That being said, one of the reasons people including management wanted Powell in was his track record of developing players.

You've got to give them time to develop, otherwise he'd be coming in and just chucking everyone out.

Must admit I had a chuckle reading the op the other night thinking that right side of Briers Westwood and gleeson (insert winger) wasn't one of the most lethal combinations for about 3 years in the league

I get that were hoping for DP to get the best out of each individual, and the squad as a collective. However, I'd be surprised if Hughes could be turned into a player that would be what I consider to be the quality of a regular in the match day 17. I never rated him at Wigan, and have never rated him in the P&B, and at 30, he really should not be standing in the way of Longstaff, or other squad members that are more likely to develop into that first team regular. We signed him after a loan spell at Huddersfield, and for me, we would have been better off loaning him out and keeping either Doro or Robson as back up.

Agree re: Longstaff. He should be in the 17 every single week. If he’s not as good as Hughes/Holmes right now, the difference is negligible as to the potential from what he/we would gain. Same with Doro and Davis/Clark. Doro could develop into something, they have done all of their growing and learning and still aren’t making an impact.

If Widdop isn’t renewed at the end of the year would people want the club to re invest in a marquee forward? Thompson perhaps? Or would everyone like to see it re invested in a like for like replacement?

I think we should shop for forwards in the same place Hull FC do instead of taking rival clubs cast offs.

Back with Gleeson - no coincidence that Fa'afili scored (at least the majority of) 73 tries in 97 games playing outside of Gleeson, including being top SL try scorer in 2007 - in a playing period when the rest of the team was pretty poor.

When Widdop leaves I want Riley Dean to be given a chance as a Wire halfback, so for me we could go for a highly paid prop forward.

It then depends on the calibre of the player that we signed as to whether he could justify being a marquee player or not.

Not necessarily one marquee but we should probably look to invest more cap space into the forwards.

That marquee spot should probably be assigned to D Clark who's surely on a lot more than the £150,000 cap value which is given to marquee players.

£150,000 for Widdop's marque spot plus whatever Clark is on above £150k (and getting rid of some deadwood) could give us plenty to spend of quality forwards.