Quote: Rogues Gallery "As a Wigan and RL fan I would have put Michael Monaghan in there, for me he was the best all round hooker in Superleague.'"
Michael Monaghan and Hicks signed at the same time as King.
With hindsight all three of those were great signings. But when we signed them, King was the blue chip superstar.
MM and Hicks had not been Origin or international players so were less well known in the UK.
In MMs case there was a question mark. We had been trying to sign Matt Orford from Melbourne Storm, for 2006. When that didn't come off we ended up getting Michael Sullivan, who had been playing as a bench hooker for Cronulla and said he wanted the opportunity to be a halfback. It didn't work for us, and we ended up using him in the same way as a hooker, which left us without a proper halfback replacement for Nat Wood who had retired.
While Sullivan was with us, Orford had joined Manly and taken MM's halfback slot, so MM got shifted out to hooker. When we signed MM we heard the same story - he wanted the chance to play as a halfback again. Because we'd been through the Sullivan experience there were concerns at the time MM was signed that this was going to happen again...MM would come to be halfback, not be very effective, and end up being shifted back to hooker, leaving us without a halfback.
Which is exactly what happened
The difference to Sullivan was that MM became as you say the best all round hooker in SL. It still meant we were using makeshift replacements at halfback for a couple of years but once we signed Myler all the pieces fell in place.
But when we signed them, King was seen as more the sure thing and there were question marks over MM. King took a while to settle too though - neither of those two really got going until TS arrived in their second season.
Hicks was the most consistent from the start but slipped under the radar as a signing because he didn't have a high profile in Aus, although he had a good NRL record.