Our last GF final season he and Hill were our only frontline props, has to be worth something.

He turned up with a decent reputation. Turned out to be distinctly average.

Not exactly the definition of underrated.

I think underrated is better suited to players who fans of other clubs don't see anything special in, but who their own fans see every week and get to see and appreciate their contribution to the team.

With that in mind, I'd say Mike Cooper is presently our most under rated player.

Very true. The fact that he matches or even outplays the mighty saints pack every time he meets them and he's performed excellently in the nrl seems to be lost on most opposition fans.

Partly in the SL era - Gary Chambers. Not the biggest prop by any means but made plenty of yards and did a ton of tackling. Hardly missed a game either which probably shortened his career. Gary gave his all in the P&B even in the latter years of his career when injuries had taken their toll.

Sims felt like a disappointment given what we were expecting, but I can see the case for him being underrated by Wire fans, as he got unfairly criticised.

The Guardian used to have a sports feature called "On Second Thoughts..." where they looked back at a footballer or tournament that may have been underappreciated at the time. You could do that for Ashton Sims and also Paul Rauhihi.

For comparison, think of Sims and Rauhihi compared to Andrew Gee and Roy Asotasi. The second pair were just disappointments. Gee was just a straight up and down runner who seemed to be over here to hang out with his buddies Langer and Renouf. Then he went back to Brisbane and played State of Origin for Queensland for the next two seasons! Asotasi....completely unforgettable, must have been the most disappointing signing of TS reign.

With Sims and Rauhihi, we expected a lot, got disappointed and by the end of their first season fans had probably written them off as bad signings. But by the time they had left, they had made a decent contribution. They weren't players that I ever felt were loafing about.

In Rauhihi's case, he was disappointing because at the time we signed him he was rated one of the top 2 or 3 props in the NRL, up there with Adrian Morley who we signed a year later. The difference was age. Rauhihi was four years older than Morley. North Queensland Cowboys signed Rauhihi at the same stage of his career that we signed Morley, and got elite production out of him. We got Rauhihi at the stage Salford got Morley. The will was still there but time had blunted his effectiveness.

In Sims case, he came in to a difficult situation because we'd had a number of years of watching a dominant Wire front row steamrollering teams. We then lost Morley, Carvell, Cooper and Wood within 12 months, and Asotasi had flopped as a replacement. So we were really hoping to have signed a big gun to fill their boots, and Sims looked like he was going to be good - big guy built like a tank, muscles, long hair, tattoos, looked like he was going to be an enforcer. In the NRL though he had been a good solid first grader rather than a top talent, he hadn't played State of Origin.

Basically that's what he was for us - a good solid first grader, similar level to Mark Hilton. So we were disappointed if we thought we were getting a new Morley or Carvell.

He did seem to embrace playing for Wire though, he had a lot of passion and didn't sulk or go hiding if we were losing. We have complained in the last couple of years that there aren't enough vocal players on the pitch trying to stand up and be leaders, but Sims did and seemed to command respect. He took the responsibilities of wearing the P&B seriously, he wasn't one of these Aussies who seems like they are counting down the days till they can engineer a move back home. He got involved with the club's off field stuff, teammates seemed to like him, he did a lot of media stuff too and came across well, he seems like an intelligent guy.

Because of his distinctive look, he became the face of the club when he was here, Sky or the BBC would always trail anything related to Warrington with some clip of Sims taking a hit up or shouting. Maybe that raised expectations and is judged to a higher standard, but if you take out the fact that he signed from Brisbane and looked like a character from the Vikings and just view him as any signing, he was a decent player with the right attitude to playing for Wire and the pack got weaker after he left.

Rauhihi was a bit of an enigma for me.
But there was one match at HJ against Leeds where he virtually single handedly totally destroyed them.
He was simply awesome.

He'd been average up to that match and I expected him to kick on after but in all honesty he didn't.
He had the odd good game but nothing ever approaching his performance in the Meds match.

Shame.

I don't get this weird thing where there was this big expectation from sims like he was was a wrecking machine in the NRL then failed to live up to it over here, he wasn't a wrecking machine and he played for us the same as he played his whole career in the NRL.
He had a really good engine, solid in defense and took the ball up hard every chance he got. He was a passionate, energetic solid forward for us and we shouldn't have let him go. He was one of the best props we've had in the past 5 years and multiple props we've signed since have failed and been utter garbage, i'd take a player like Sims any day of the week.

Interesting last couple of pages.
Sims.
I wouldn't say he was underrated, just a good honest player who didn't let you down (Waterhouseesque. A good player, that was just [imissing something [/i) . When he and Hill were rotated after 25 minutes or so, our performances dropped off, and we struggled until they came back on.

Rauhihi
I liked the fella. A good offloading prop. One of the [ifaithful's [/i scapegoats, though. I remember speaking to a lad I know (his girlfriend /wife was part of the club establishment, then) and her story was " It was easier to tell you what was right with his body, rather than tell you what was wrong with his body, when we signed him. He was falling apart". A shame he missed out on Wembley.

Gee
Basically, Langer's minder, who liked a fight. I remember Flearey and Farrell at Leeds both trying to take him on, simultaneously. It didn't end well for them. A disappointment. If, as Sally says, he went back and played SoO, it must've been on reputation alone. That, or Queensland must've been down to the bare bones for props.
An old Widnesian work colleague of mine came down to Wilderspool to watch Langer, and he was full of praise. Then, he turned to Gee. "Andrew Gee? ANDREW ####ING GEE? You might as well've signed Fred Gee (old Coronation Street reference from the 70's/80's.......he was a fat barman). He wasn't impressed

Wainwright
Again, I liked the fella. Another of the [ifaithful's [/i scapegoats whenever he made a mistake.

Asotasi
Up there with Roberts. [i'nuff said[/i [size=50wink[/size

I remember that game well. We completely smashed them, Fa'afili got a hat-trick, Rauhihi monstered them. It was like watching men against boys, the boys being a Leeds team with Peacock, Lauititi, Ellis, JJB in the pack.

In the Cullen era, we would get these performances where we looked completely awesome. The atmosphere and reaction from the crowd in those dominant Cullen era performances was better than it was in 2011 when TS team was smashing everyone. Back then there was an excited expectation every time we put on a performance like that, which got us thinking about whether we could be Grand Final contenders, whereas in the TS era it was more like "yeah yeah, we know we're going to be in the playoffs anyway so this game doesn't make a difference".

A few weeks after that Leeds win then we had that horrible loss away in the Challenge Cup quarter final against Hull KR. That derailed us and sent us in to a disastrous run of form, Cullen kept bringing it up after future defeats, saying the cup loss "absolutely knocked the stuffing out of us" which summed up the frailty in the team at that time that separated us from being a trophy winning side. Teams like Saints and Bradford could have a bad loss and then whoever they played next week got the backlash and it was soon forgotten, with us bad defeats would hang over us.

We had an interesting set of games with TS's Leeds team that year. At the HJ, Rauhihi carved them up. Later in the season we went to Headingley and they got revenge on us, they kept spreading the ball wide early and shredded us to pieces. We lacked pace and Leeds had us chasing shadows. Then a few weeks later, we went back to Leeds in the playoffs, expecting a similar shallacking, and won our first ever SL playoff victory with Briers kicking a drop goal at the end. I was living in Leeds at the time and the mood locally really turned against TS after that playoff game, and he never won the fans back over although he did win SL the next season before leaving for the GB job.

Yeah I forgot about Gee's liking for the brawls. He seemed like an old school prop and probably enjoyed the fact that RL over here back then was still quite relaxed about a bit of biff. It was usually just a sin bin and forgotten about whereas in Aus they handed out lengthy bans and their media would condemn them for setting a bad example to the children and so on.

Gee played in both the 2002 and 2003 Origin series, and players don't usually get picked for Origin on reputation/sentimental reasons so I'm guessing his form picked up when he went back there...

When I went to the Broncos Leagues Club, I was surprised at how revered Gee is in Brisbane. He's regarded as one of their all time greats, pictures of him in a prominent position in their displays. Mind you....Gee did used to be a director of the Leagues Club. He had a job working for the Broncos, and resigned in strange circumstances, when the auditors found $300k of payments going out of the leagues club that couldn't be accounted for. The NRL tried to investigate the Broncos for salary cap breaches, and said their investigation was hampered because Gee and some other officials stopped them having access to information. After that the NRL basically made him an outcast from working in RL there.

A few years later, he was running a building company and faced a lot of complaints that his firm wasn't paying contractors, then went in to liquidation.

Seems like an interesting character.

Agree, add him to our pack now and it improves.

Dennis Curling was a very talented winger. Played in the John Bevan era which is probably why he never got the fan's plaudits.

Loved Curling... didn't he get a neck injury that ended his career early?

Yes at Central Park. He got up and played the ball after the tackle that caused the injury. It was subsequently reported that if he had tried to carry on he would’ve been paralysed.

Sally
Very interesting piece on Gee. Never knew that.

Denis Curling - yes we tend to forget about players like him as for many of us it was when we were getting into RL and the whole set up as different.

Nowadays thanks to Warrington Borough Council and Simon Moran and partners we almost expect to be at or near the top.
Back then we didn't

Glad Wainrights been mentioned. As a kid on the terraces and at home around family there would be "oh no's" whenever he got the ball and fears a drop was coming. Maybe I was too young to remember his first spell and the worries were warranted but having watched some games from his second spell recently he was actually very good with ball in hand and putting people away. I remember the game against Wigan in 2004 with Wood going under the stands. Wainright had an absolute blinder. Tackled everything, put in decent kicks when he was given it on the last and then chased it down to make the tackle, drew defenders well and put people into gaps, assisted a try and scored one himself after a cut out pass to Gaskell down the wing.

He and Nathan Wood had a good patnership on that side and I really do think he was much better than ever given credit for.

I always think how good Wainwright would been if he’d have moved to a team like Saints. Look at what it did for Scully...and Fozzard even.
I wish we had a Wainwright’ now with a half decent pack around him.

There's a strange phenomenon with players that come through the Academy, when they first emerge they get overrated by our fanbase, but those that are good enough to become fixtures in the first team seem to become underrated and underappreciated over time.

I think its that everybody is hoping for the next player where we strike gold like Harris or Sculthorpe, so when they are on the fringes of the team or play their first few games, the hype goes overboard. But after a while they probably get judged more critically as Academy products than they would have been if they signed from outside. Wainwright suffered from that like Riley.

Thinking about Wainwright, and the stick he copped at the end of his first spell with us, there was another player who suffered a similar experience soon after but never recovered from it: Jon Roper.

Neither of them had been long term underperformers, they basically had one bad season where they lost the confidence of the fans and DVDV, but in both cases the fans were savage. Now its 20 years on, the Roper thing looks OTT. From what I remember he'd been quite popular in his first few seasons, and we had high hopes for him as a home grown product. In 1999 he was in the GB train-on squad. Then he had a few bad games in 2000 and the crowd turned really nasty. Worse than they had on Wainwright. With Wainwright it was impatient moans and groans, but the Fletcher Street End REALLY hated Roper in 2000, it was malicious. He got the kind of stick that was usually reserved for Bobby Goulding!

DVDV farmed him out to Salford, and I think he had a bit of time with Castleford then disappeared. His decline was unusually steep.

Nobody ever brings up Roper as a player where we say "what might have been", but if my memory is right, he only really had a few bad months of form and he was kicked to the curb. Ryan Atkins went through spells like that a couple of times and came back from it. Was Roper really a lost cause, or with a more supportive coach and sympathetic fan base, could he have been brought back to the level he was in the previous couple of seasons?

Interesting point, SC. Cooper wasn’t tremendously popular before he went to the NRL, and even now there seems to be a section of support that under rates him. So far (touch wood) Philbin seems to have avoided the over praise then turn on him cycle.
I also wonder to what extent Wilderspool played a part in what happened. You could often hear a single fan’s withering comment which was picked up by others,this doesn’t seem to apply at the HJ.

Yeah I think Cooper is underappreciated, probably he slipped under the radar because he emerged in the team at a time when we had a strong pack and we weren't desperate for the next new hope so weren't pinning massive expectations on him.

Steve Pickersgill seemed to get more hype than either Cooper or Paul Wood. There was serious buzz about him when he was coming through.

The Wilderspool point is interesting too. Wilderspool was more cliquey in terms of certain types of supporters congregating in different parts of the ground, eg pondlife corner and the Fletcher Street End. In the Fletch you had a type of supporter, generally male, aged about 35 to 60, who had been going since the 60s/70s/80s, had a grumpy cynical attitude and also a complete certainty that they were the ultimate authority on rugby league. Their general view of the world was:any Wire coach was a total idiot, there were tons of lads out there at Woolston Rovers who were better than the tosh we put on the field but the club wasn't looking at them, the RFL was in league with Wigan and Saints and the refs were taking backhanders, they would always moan about who got named the sponsor's man of the match and when the crowd figure was announced they'd say that was a lie too. They had old school views about not playing players out of position, someone is a 6 not a 7 or vice versa, the fullbacks main job was to tackle as the last line of defence and so on. If a player left Warrington to join another club it was a mortal sin. Once this lot had decided that a player was in their sights, the barracking they would get would be relentless and week after week. Wainwright and Roper were victims.

I used to stand in this part of the Fletch in my teens and twenties, because I liked the raucous atmosphere but these types did get on my nerves. I'm sure they came to the HJ too but I think the stadium move diluted them around the ground more. They fed off each other's anger and I think that lessened at the HJ.

A few years later I moved to Leeds and started watching Super League games in the Skyrack pub, and you would get the Leeds version of these Fletcher Street know-alls, they had the same kind of world view. Sometimes Gary Schofield would be in there stood in the middle of them spouting off and they hung on his every word. His media columns said the same stuff they believe too. The Leeds version were also obsessed with Geoff Boycott and the power struggles of who was on the committee at Yorkshire Cricket Club. I remember they had it in for Karl Pratt and they treated Tony Smith as a suspicious outsider. They didn't seem as enthralled as the younger Leeds fans with the high tempo offloading game that he brought in when they started winning, and after that Cup final when they lost to Hull they turned on him.

When i see comments like this i think instantly of Toby King who seems to get pelters on here. hen i watch Toby King i see a very good defender who could still improve his attacking game. Maybe the Wire fans wouldn't notice until he leaves. Just an observation. Same goes for Livett. Is it a coaching problem?

Good observation by your good self and others on this topic. It is difficult to understand sometimes the anti comments against some players wearing the P&B. When I stood in the South Stand before moving across the pitch to the North Stand there was this bloke who stood near us who ranted and raved every week against whoever happened to be the 'current' scapegoat. You had to think, what is going on in his head ? Fans have their favourites, of course they do but some of the vitriol aimed at others is sometimes quite baffling. Yes everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course they are but sometimes



Someone has mentioned there are rumblings about Livet returning to Warrington. Good news.

yeah Livett could very well be coming back to us, if Currie goes we might want him to fill the gap and use the money from BMM and currie to strengthen elsewhere?

Greg Inglis