When did Lima retire here?

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Danny Lima?

When he heard the words "Welcome to the Halloween Jones, Danny. That's your peg in the dressing room. Paul does his game tactics in the London Bridge, around 10ish, 48 hours before gametime. We hope you enjoy your stay."

I see

The problem Rodwell had was he made himself too accessible to the fans by coming on the Wolfweb forum and posting, and also he did a lot of media stuff in the off season and was popular with everyone at the club and with journalists so he had this image of being a great guy and the media had started to build him up to be a saviour figure.

Rodwell had never been an elite player in the NRL, he'd been a promising junior that was rookie of the year in his first season at Newcastle Knights but then the Johns brothers emerged, Rodwell moved on and was a steady pro at a few clubs. But the year before he joined us, he'd finished bottom of the league with Penrith and decided to quit the game until Steve Anderson talked him out of it.

By the time the season started, half our fan base was in love with Rodwell and his posting on the club website forum, and the other half, who had been there and seen it all with Wire, were probably thinking "yeah, this guy likes to chat with the fans but lets see if he's any good before making a hero out of him....?"

Very quickly when our form went bad he then became the focal point for the fans anger. He'd put himself out to be open to dialogue and so he got it. He wasn't great but he wasn't that bad in the context of some other players we have had, and he was replaced by Tommy O'Reilly who bizarrely got some kind of cult hero status for a while in a terrace chant whilst being a downgrade on Rodwell. One of the games not long before he left - when we won away at Hull, Rodwell had played pretty well and him and Briers worked well together. But I think once he had that incident when his family were abused in the car park he decided he had had enough.

I think Rodwell was a good honest pro who had realised he was past his best and so had decided to retire after a bad season in Aus, and got persuaded to give it a go in England and then realised pretty early that things weren't working out and so quit. He had a two year contract and he could have coasted about and just taken the money.

Overall it was a signing that didn't work out but he wasn't the worst of all time in the way that some say - he was better than some of our halfbacks from the late 1990s.

Lima had his supporters for the same reason that Jerome Guisset did, players that do big hits get the crowd going even if they have their faults.

Lima also helped his cause by being in good form in his early games when people are scrutinising a new signing. He arrived the same time as Leikvoll and after 5 games I think a lot of people had decided that Leikvoll was a dud but Lima looked like he had a bit of fight in him.

Over time though Leikvoll was a more consistent and better player than Lima.

Lima had two good spells with us: his first few games and then in 2005, when we went on a long winning run and looked for the first time in about 10 years like a side that was actually going somewhere. Aside from that he was a bit mixed.

Overall as an overseas prop signing I'd put him behind Rauhihi and Leikvoll and ahead of Asotasi and Gee, around the same level as Ashton Sims.

A couple of good posts Sally but imo Lima was not at the Sims level.
I've a lot of time for Ashton.
I liked Leikvoll but think Sims is faster and fitter although Leikvoll was a couple of stones heavier so more difficult to put down

Certain aspects of Ashton Sims game are open to criticism, but his commitment to the cause is never less than 100%. If only the talented players of the Cullen and DVDV eras had half his enthusiasm and professionalism we might have seen a few trophies.

Brendan tuuta

Tommy O'Reilly !! That's the bloke I've been racking my brains about... I used to cringe over that terrace chant probably the most average player I've seen turnout for us and I felt the away fans were laughing at us when his name was sung ...

Another one Dean Gaskell.. Now this guy was a tryer no debating that .. But for a winger he rarely scored a try and when he got the ball he'd hit it up.. Bounce off the tackler go backwards 5 yards, hit another tackler spin round... Run sidewards avoiding two or three more tacklers... Then spin back the way he came from to eventually be brought down for a loss of 5-10 yards... To cries of DEANOOOO....DEANOOOO... From the south stand...

I'm not saying I particularly disliked the players I just couldn't get my head round the terrace worship for them..

I felt the same about O'Reilly who really was a lower division standard player but seemed to have a cool dude image because he had just rocked up out of nowhere and started playing SL and our standards were so low at that time that he became a cult hero.

In the last game of that season, after we had secured our SL status, we went to Wakefield Trinity and got smashed by 50 points. At the end of the game Cullen was fuming and said the game had helped make his mind up about some players. O'Reilly was never seen again.



It was fair enough that fans wanted to try and boost his confidence but other players do seem to be judged by much higher standards. Chris Riley was one who I felt never got a fair rap from our supporters - any mistake he made would have fans on his back despite having an excellent record which is better than any of our other home grown wingers of the modern era, including Forster.

TS clearly wanted 'bulky' wings and Chris didn't fit the bill so was let go - erroneously imo.
Even though he was relatively small (about 5'8'') I don't remember many teams getting the better of him with high balls or 'running over him'.
I'd suggest he made less errors than Penny (but I have been impressed with Penny's ability to make yards in the tackle - better than Lineham or Gene from what I remember).
Russell is a bulkier version of Penny (not tall) but not as quick, although can't doubt his ability to make yards at the ptb and difficult to put down.

Anyway we've got what we've got for 2017 so that's Lineham and Russell with Evans and Penny as cover.

Roll on February

Riley was probably starting to decline when TS let him go, but his place had been considered questionable by a lot of our fans on here at least for a while before that despite his consistent scoring record. I just think a lot of people were never that convinced by him but his performances were good for a long time. I think he's about our 13th/14th all time top try scorer: in the modern era only Briers and Joel Monaghan have more than him.

It's a strange phenomenon about home grown players that have come through the Academy, some get a lot of leeway from the terraces, because they are home grown (Gaskell and Penny), others get held up to higher standards: Riley was one and also Mike Wainwright in his first spell, he used to be a magnet for abuse from the crowd and was mocked when he went to Salford although in his second spell he was popular.

Riley was no world beater, but he was an outstanding finisher and I think he was hugely underrated. Always felt he didn't get the plaudits he deserved, especially as he was born and bred in the town and came through our own academy. Of course it's unlikely he would have achieved such success if he wasn't outside of good centres and halfbacks, but the same can be argued of Hicks, Monaghan et al.

Dean Busby and Chris Morley?
How on gods planet was they considered as some value for Scully?

Didn't Saints give us £350k cash for Scully? Seem to remember a figure round that amount.

I think we took them and someone else who also wasn't good enough for about half the fee, which was rumoured about that but officially undisclosed.

It was £300,000 + Chris Morley (rated at £70,000)

Didn't Busby come with him? Either that or we bought him with the money we had just got for Scilly. Which is technically the same thing if not officially the same.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sport/rugby_league/42215.stm

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sport/rugby_league/42215.stm

All the best BWW

Busby came the following year. My lingering memory of him is probably the most "wtf Wire" moment ever. It was away at Wakefield, we were 2 points up and gifted them a penalty in the last minute that would have allowed them to get a draw if Steve McNamara kicked it. He put the kick wide, but Busby dropped it, and Wakefield scored a try that gave them an unlikely win.

Had a quick skim through the previous pages and didn't spot the name I would throw into the pot ...... Paul Hulme.
At the time I seemed to always develop some kind of stutter when cheering him on and the best I could muster was invariably along the lines of
...Huu .....Huu... Huu Widnes so and so.

Apologies if he has been mentioned already but I disliked him so much I think he deserves another mention

Apologies to Paul if you are reading this but you were so closely associated with Widnes I couldn't help it, good player as you were, well certainly for the Chemics.

...while we're Widnes'ing it, although he'd be better placed in a guilty pleasure if you could own up to it......Tony Myler!
Annoyingly a class player he was. He always made sure we were bridesmaids in Derby's.

Paul Bishop never liked him anyway. But no show at Maine Road for cup semi did it for me.
Currier. Couldn't tackle a big dinner.

Not a player but our worst ever signing was Steve Anderson.