And Ricky Hatton with his bags of, erm, talcum powder...

and to think, they question our salary cap

Bateman's autobiography mad me shudder as a Wire fan when retells how he was treated at the end by us. If we didn't want to keep him why offer him a crap contract on considerably less than he was on before. Can't blame him for going, but the fact that he went on such bad terms was appalling for such a good servant to the club.
As for Gleeson, not many players have a track record for conduct as bad as him. We all know he can play but can he behave like an adult? If he makes it to the end of the 2012 season still at the KC I'll be surprised.

Quite agree MKC. I cherry-picked my pages of Bateman's book (I have no desire to read about the 3 point code, bits), and i too, found his leaving....shall we say unnacceptable, to one who gave us so much.

Gleeson. Well let's just say that the general public tend to think that the vast majority of RL players are thick northerners. Gleeson does nothing to stop the stereotype.

Not quite. Johnson was a third-party to Peter Higham offering Bateman a lesser contract than four years previous. From Bateman's perspective, he didn't argue Bateman's case though.

That was the start of a 10+ year slippery slope, for me
We lost qualty players (Davies Bateman), some were coming to the (quality) ends of their careers Shelford, Ellis etc.
Yes we had youth coming through (Harris/Penny/Hilton/Roper established, Wainwright/Sculthorpe coming through), but we started to lose our way.