yes he made mistakes and missed some tackles but half the team was guilty of that too.
My point was you have also to look at the forwards around him at the time they were chopped and changed.
The left side was usually Ellis and Yeaman two good defenders.
A lot more kicks go to the right in RL which put more pressure on Crooks.
I just think Radford should have moved Ellis and yeaman to the right and moved Crooks to the left rather than just binning him.

Crooks had - understandably IMO - been dropped for poor performances, particularly in defence.

The issue for me was replacing him with Whiting rather than Sa or another back. And then persisting with that selection way beyond the point when it was clear that Whiting's days as a centre are way behind him.

Nobody is suggesting that Radford is a mistake-free zone. Far from it. Some of his selections and rotations have bordered on being Agar-esque at times. But PG made some almost equally baffling and infuriating decisions during his time at the helm.

has Whiting ever had days as a first choice SL player?

he makes a brilliant bridesmaid, always too sow t get there for the cake.

He's never held down a position due to his utility value and unfortunately a few injuries.

He started 28 out of 31 games in 2011 (and had been given the squad number 3) but was moved around between fullback, centre and wing.

2011

3 years ago

sentiment abounds

I didn't see any sentiment in that post TBH, just a simple statement of facts.

In his prime Whiting was, IMO, one of the best utility players in the league. If not THE best. I can't recall the last time I saw a player who could do a good job in quite so many positions. He was also Mr. Consistency at a time when many of his colleagues were up and down in performances every other week, and a smart player when we seemed to be the dumbest team in the league.

Hence for me the fact that he never 'held down a starting position' is a bit of a red herring. The best use of his abilities IMO was in the utility role, and given the injuries we've had during his time here he's been invaluable. Now past his best and definitely too slow for the backs he's still decent value as a squad player providing cover in the forwards.

Pretty much agree with that. Whiting would have been in any squad in the league.
I actually had a moment, cannot remember the game when I said he was the best player we ever signed


Hopefully he will do better next season

Yeah Whiting looked off the pace last season for me - must have been hampered by injury for most of the year.

A couple of years ago, I don't think it is too bold a statement to say that I think every side in the league would have him in their squad. Relatively inexpensive player who can cover practically every position

At risk of bringing this back to the original posters point...
I think we're just as good as anyone else at coaching youngsters, everyone has natural attrition of players who look like they will make it but don't. Even Wigan have had quite a few of those, Shaun Ainscough anyone? St Helens have had a lot, Ste Tyrer was going to be the English Matt Gidley. I'm also happy with the bedding in approach we are taking, it's not a "Big Bang" where you throw a kid in and it magically works and he's a first team starter for 10 years. It takes time for them to acclimatize and that's what we have done this year with a lot of our younger players. Hadley for example, probably isn't ready to play a full season playing 80 mins a week, but I would expect next year his game time will again increase from this year.
It's a process we all need to accept takes time, for the good of the club and players.

Can anyone name a season where we didn't say this?

Not Radford's fault, and as much as I wish it wasn't him, maybe we need to just stick with a coach and a squad for 3-4 years and see how we get along. We've chopped anc changed too often since we got to the KC.

I completely agree, we need to finally pick someone and stick with it, and for what it's worth I actually believe we're heading in the right direction with Radford...maybe I'm just an optimist!

for every one of me we need a one of you, no problem with optimism, we balance each other quite well.

Standee in sensible post shocker



FWIW I agree with you. I'm not in the Radford in or Radford out camp, but think we need a bit of proper stability to fix the problems of the past. AP has shown that he supports Radford so I'm happy for now. We obviously need to show some improvement in 2015, if only as evidence of us turning a corner and the approach being the right one.

As fans we need to lower our expectations a bit too. If we happen to beat Wigan in our first game, for example, we need to keep away from the buying Grand Final merchandise mentality and take it all one step at a time. Similarly if Sneyd throws three interceptions in his first game and Wakey trounce us at home, we needn't be chucking season passes away.

You'd think that after all these years people would have known what to expect with us, but its still euphoria or gloom, and a period of stability across everything to do with the club would do us the world of good. Even here might become fun again!

I'm as fed up as everyone that we didn't kick on from 2005/6 to become a force in the game (and the old board's "season of promise" campaign didn't help). I'm fed up that it's always "next year" with us (unlike Wire

) but it [uwill[/u come right, I'm sure of that.

100% agree, best post I have read in ages.

We're really not as good as anyone else at bringing through youngsters. How many international players has our academy produced since the start of SL compared to the likes of wigan, leeds, saints and bradford?

These clubs have monopolised SL for nearly twenty years, and have been rewarded with serious amounts of prizemoney (something the RFL doesn't seem to publicise nowadays) and this has helped them to maintain their dominance.

Rubbish, bradford have been bust twice, saints haven't won a major trophy since 2008 and wigan nearly went down in 2006

So producing Internationals is no measure of success, which is what your previous post was suggesting.

What are you talking about? Someone posted that we are as good at developing youngsters as any other club which I pointed out was wrong, which it clearly is. Your point about prize money is irrelevant to what i posted

So significant extra monies to support the academy structure with better facilities, more coaches etc doesn't help, fair enough.

Who said that? Where is your evidence to prove who spends what on academies? Basic facts are that we aren't as good as some teams at producing our own top class players. The reasons for that will be complex and will, undoubtedly include finance but that wasn't the point the poster I replied to made. Now if you can come up with some evidence that our academy produces players as well as every other club in SL then I'll happily admit to being wrong

A very good question posted by the OP, but I will expand it.

Is it about the coaching ability or talent identification.

Are we reliant on signing quartile 1 players and persisting with them and trying to turn them into SL standard as opposed to the late developing quartile 4 players who are proven to have more success when it comes to the talent pathway, especially to Elite level with England.

Q1 players stand out at youth, usually in dominant teams so naturally people presume they will go all the way, sometimes this is to the detriment of their core skills, be this down to poor coaching or the players thinking they do not need to learn as size and speed overrules.

The RFL are looking at this and have brought out new programs to address this but it will take a lot of time and belief, plus an education in certain peoples thought processes.

The other issue is if these players have developed coping mechanisms for the more intense physical contact they will receive, something they might not have done whilst bring in 'great teams'. And ability to be able to handle defeat or how to win games from a negative position and do things the hard way.

I will give you that we haven't been good enough over the past years (and keeping them) but I think in the last 2 maybe 3 years we're getting there - i.e since Agar left.
Creating international players isn't a measure of success, I'd say players playing in SL/NRL is a better measure. If we take that, even in our "darker" Agar days we've created a number of players through our academy, Tommy Lee, Scott Wheeldon, Danny Washbrook, Reece Lyne, Tom Briscoe are all playing SL regularly albeit elsewhere. Wasn't there a thread on here mentioning how many players are now playing SL regularly who used to be at Hull.
And for players playing at Hull through our academy, Danny Houghton, Tom Lineham, Chris Green and Bowden are first team regular, Hadley pretty regular, Shaul played nearly every game last season. So I don't think we're doing too bad if you don't purely search for Internationals.

As for internationals, we have created at least 2 internationals from our academy recently, Josh Hodgson (granted he left) and Tom Briscoe. Seen as you said since SL started Horne played international, Yeaman did, Paul King (Token app for England I think) Cooke should have.

Tom Briscoe was effectively always going to be international standard when he came to us..he wasn't far off aside from fitness & a bit of experience, we certainly didn't 'develop' him. His innate abilities were there to see at 17, power/speed and a decent amount of pluck..just not that smart/thinking ability which still shows in his mistakes, the same ones that he's been making ever since he came on the scene.

That said, creating international standard players from your youth set up IS a measure of success, the statistics back that up. to ignore those quite obvious facts is just crazy. yes we've had some very decent players come through our system..that's the law of averages and once in a while a gem turns up. That said we've had far too many 'prospects' turn into average players.
Washbrook was going to be the next club captain for years to come..our amazing coach at the time put paid to that, Houghton has been a very good player but has never kicked on, Yeaman had all the tools aside from a brain and did pretty ok with them in spells but goes missing far too often. Cooke/Horne are the best youth system players we've produced in the last 15 years.
Certainly Hadley, Green, Lineham & Saul [icould[/i turn into top notch SL players, will they step up to international grade.. the odds are against them for sure.

Answer to the question asked. Yes we have hopefully time will tell