After seeing the 2012 semi on facebook it got me thinking about players who were underrated (and even harshly criticized) by fans.

Trent Waterhouse is a name I'll throw into the ring.

Grix spent most of his career underrated but was well rated eventually by the wire faithful. The rest of the league never seemed to get it though. Harrison was pretty underrated looking back. I agree with Waterhouse, I think we expected too much really when he came over and didn't appreciate what he did bring. I also think given how we look shy a proper big lad in the pack carvell probably didn't get enough praise at the time.

Toby King is underrated by a lot of our supporters now IMO.

I was thinking about this myself the other day after watching the semi aswell, I forgot how much work Ben Harrison got through. Tackle after Tackle and never shied away from taking a drive forward. For his work rate alone i'd proberbly pick him. Played for England aswell which makes the way we seeminingly just F'd him off for no apparent reason even more bizzarre

I must admit to not being Waterhouse's biggest fan at the time probably based on my expectation rather than what he was actually doing on the field. A player that rarely, if ever gets any plaudits from that same team is Chris Riley. He's not a Monaghan or Hicks but don't think he ever let us down, quite happy to put his body on the proverbial line for a 'small' guy and not a bad strike rate.

Chris Bridge.

Riley for sure.

Usually fans have positive bias towards Warrington-born, Academy-produced talent and overhype the few that do come through. Riley never got much appreciation despite scoring a hundred odd tries, winning three Challenge Cups and holding down a place in our strongest team for decades. He never even got the hometown folk hero reputation that Mark Forster had. It felt like a lot of our fans didn't really think he was good enough and thought we could do better. You couldn't use the Fa'afili argument (he only got all those tries because of playing outside Gleeson) because most of the time he played outside Ryan Atkins, who everyone says never passed to his winger.

A few years before Riley emerged, we had Dean Gaskell, and it felt like the fans were always on his side, chanting 'Deano Deano' and willing him to make it, even though he never scored. Riley always scored tries but never had the same goodwill.

I wonder if some of it was because Kevin Penny emerged at a similar time, and most people would have preferred Penny because he was a more exciting prospect, but Riley won that selection battle as he was more consistent when Penny went through his flaky form. Possibly some fans thought that if we'd have persevered with Penny we'd have had a player with an extra yard of pace, and that Riley was like settling for the lesser option but I don't agree, Riley was better equipped to handle SL.

The other thing I really liked with Riley was he came back from being written off a couple of times. How often have we seen young players go through a bad spell of form, get dropped, sent out on loan and then their career disappears into the lower leagues. A narrative then often gets created around them that they were 'treated disgracefully' by whoever was coach at the time and they would have been a great if only we'd persevered with them. But that happened to Riley after we signed Joel Monaghan and he was sent off to Harlequins on loan, but he came back and won his place back in the team and was one of the top try scorers for the next couple of seasons. He also adapted to being moved from wing to fullback without fuss.

An excellent Wire winger

Michael Eagar and Mike Forshaw - only spent a season with us but were impressive while here.

Danny Nutley was superb for us without getting much credit, signed for Cronulla and played State of Origin.

Brent Grose in his first few seasons was one of the better outside backs in SL without getting much fanfare. Tailed off in his last couple of years though.

Jon Clarke for a period in his later career was underrated. He'd been around a long time so everyone's opinions on him were probably fixed: fit athlete, hard worker, limited player. But for a season or two he was one of the top players in the league.

Chris Leikvoll was good too. He was like a throwback to the 80s props. He was a big man with good hands who had his head up looking to offload and be creative rather than just doing hit ups. He played in an era where everyone had moved to battering ram props that they would rotate on and off the field with the interchange, so through that lens, Leikvoll was seen as slow and lumbering but he was a good player, I'd have liked to see him play in TS squad later as I think he could have been effective like Solomona.

Hard to disagree with a word of that, UR.
I never got the "love in" for Waterhouse. Don't get me wrong, nowt wrong with the fella, he was just Gary Sanderson (again, nowt wrong with him), but imported on a Aussie International's payrate.

My underrated guy goes to Paul Wood.
When we saw peak Morley and Carvell, Wood often got forgotten about. What I saw on last night's screening of the semi from 12, showed another good outing for him.
Some balls to that fella....well, he did have


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Wood was good for a long time. In the pre-TS era we were an inconsistent team and had a lot of players whose form went up and down, Wood was probably our most reliable performer every week over that decade. I think he's the Academy product that has given us the most over a full career since Mike Gregory.

I can't believe anyone didn't rate warehouse when he was playing for us. The bloke was immense! I still cringe thinking about that thread on here where the majority of fans wanted us to swap him with Danny kirmond!!!
If he and hodgson had played in that 2013 grand final we would not still be getting mocked with always your year chants.

Agree with Grix and Riley as being underrated/undervalued. I'd add Logan Swann, who new his way to the try line during the Cullen era.

That right edge at that time, was immense
Swan
Gleeson
Fa'afili

Not rating Waterhouse would make me question anyone's knowledge of RL...madness. I remember the ridiculous 'lazy' thread, someone wasn't watching his dummy runs, taking four into the tackle on every drive, great offloads and fantastic defence.

I know he wasnt underrated as such but watching the old games back reminds me of how good Atkins was in his pomp, brain farts aside...big game player.

In his day, Atkins was as good as any centre in the league. Been very difficult to replace, which shows you how good he was.

Atkins was very underappreciated by the wire faithful. My own dad is one of his detractors, the fact that he scored as many as he did would suggest to me that he was right to back himself so often. He scored a lot of tries that he had absolutely no right to score.