Can I be the fitst to blame Kevin Penney?

I don't remember Hilton being small, he was quite a big bloke wasn't he, must have been about 6ft 4 or so?

Wasn't his nickname "The Beast" or was that a reference to a specific part of his body rather than his overall size?

Pickersgill's lack of lateral movement, allied to his lack of pace, meant he was never going to cut-it at the top level. That is before you address his 'professionalism'

I'm not sure what more Cooper could do. Consistent member of the 17; consistent performances. Granted, he is no Sam Burgess, but I don't recall anybody labelling him such.

Mike Callan looked destined to be a cracker, but a badly broken leg put paid to that. I was surprised he managed to play on, even at lower level.

I don't recall Warren Stevens ever being seen as a great. That said, we really didn't do him any favours. The amount of game time we made him play was a disregard for our duty of care.

As for Riley, again, his lateral movement is a bit of a concern, but where he differs from Pickersgill is his pace. He is quite fleet of foot. I have quite high hopes for him.

You're right about the nickname and assuming it was meant for his overall stature (!), actually he wasn't so big.
I bought the a ball from the last game at Wilderspool (V Fev) which was auctioned as part of his testimonial and then received it from Mark on the pitch at Wilderspool. I remember him being about 6 foot and well made but not in the Morley sort of way.

His fellow prop - Nick Fozzard - was actually much bigger.

At one stage both Fozz and Mark had heavy strapping on their forearms - as did Woody !

Stevens got a game in 96, after beast did his shoulder the first time and chambo broke his arm away at sheffield.

Warren was a big puppy fat carrying academy prop, probably about 17 at the time with a blonde bowl cut and got thrown in as we had no one else, remember him getting a back hand off dean sampson on Sky that year that knocked him out?

Same thing happened in 97, we had another prop crisis, and brains got drafted back in and despite his youth and inexperience just got left in the first team until we released him.

Yeah my memory might be exaggerating Stevens rep at that time to be honest. I think you are right he was just shoved in because we had nobody. We had a young Jon Duffy at the time too who was coming in to the team at a similar age.

I think back then because we had brought Harris and Sculthorpe through there were a lot of high hopes for other young players coming through: Penny, Hilton and Roper in particular. Actually Roper looked a decent prospect for about 3 seasons and was in the GB train on squad in 1999, and then he just fell to pieces the following year (when Langer came).

At the time we had Warren Stevens in the first team didn't we have Danny Sculthorpe in the Academy too? He might have been worth persevering with.