Pity he wasn't moved to hooker sooner & its a bigger pity we didn't have Smithy on board earlier!!!

Ah I loved Chris Hicks and was devastated when he left. He performed from the get-go and never once didn't earn his wages. He was always solid and dependable and I never feared when he was under a high ball!

Chris Hicks has been one of the very best wingers I have ever seen at Wire in over 30 years.
He's up there with John Bevan (not born when Brian was around) and Mark Forster, and ahead of Dezzie and Richard Henare.
Faster than Joel and as good under the high ball in both defence and attack and just as powerful.
Rarely made a mistake (I remember one against Hull when he was over the line and the ball was knocked out of his hands before he put it down - but that's the only one!).
Watched his hat-trick from 2010 Wembley again - all of those tries needed scoring. None were gifts. Power, athleticism and brains.

Having said that - we'll miss King more because Joel is a very good replacement for Hicks, and Waterhouse for Louis.
Matt King does so much work in attack and defence and ran himself into the ground at Hull - said he was 'blowing a bit' at the end - no wonder given his performance.
A real loss for us.
Will be interesting to see how we go without him.......

Glad we've got Monas tied up. Awesome hooker and general. Takes the pressure off Lee.
Monas is in with a shout for MOS I think.

That's a bit contentious, fez
Hicks was a BRILLIANT winger for us, but, better than DESSIE?????? Ohhhh (opinions eh, oodavem)

back on thread, the 4 that Cullen/Moran brought in, have been FANTASTICHE for us, despite a couple of them having 'dark days' at our club.

Yes he was better than Dessie - for us.

Maybe not over his whole career, Dessie for Leigh had a fantastic record. But on performances for us, Hicks was the complete package as a winger, Dessie was a hero who had his flaws.

Dessie was hard and used to tackle with his head and because he never spoke to the media had that Cantona-esque enigma quality about him. But he lacked height, was shaky when people kicked to him, and his try scoring record for us was nothing special, about on par with Forster. Dessie would never have dominated opposition wingers in the air like Hicks did.

People's memories are playing tricks with them. Yes, dessie was very shaky at the end of his time with us, but the first season he played for us was the best of any winger i have seen in my time(too young for either of the bevans).

Does Henry Fa'afili not get a mention, amazing finisher of tries.

Well he had a great try scoring record, I wouldn't say he was a great finisher. He was good in the air and did do some good takes from Briers kicks but how many of his tries were just running on the end of Briers and Gleeson's moves...?

I reckon if Rob Smyth had been around outside Gleeson, he would have got nearly as many tries as Fa'afili did.

I'm not so sure, a centre can only make so much room for his winger, the rest is on them to finish, he scored a hell of a lot tries that took some scoring did Henry.

Do you think Smith would have rated Fa'afilli? I'm a bit torn in my own head about it.

Well I can't claim to have seen all Dessies matches - and probably not even most of them. He was as hard as nails as has been said and was a good finisher and hard tackler, but not as good in the air and I seem to remember his passing wasn't too good.
So yes - it's Hicks for me.

Regarding Fa'afili - he was very very good and his partnership with Glees was top draw, but he was also lazy at times - particualrly at tracking back, and I don't think he'd have been able to score the 3 tries Hicks did at Wembley.

Just my personal thoughts.

It's hard to judge anyone who only played under Cullen because we were such a different team, we could attack as well as we do now in fits and starts but our defence and fitness were leagues below today, largely because (from what I can gather) Cullen really didn't set a good tone for the team to work in. If Henry had played in TS's Wire side, who knows but Hicks was something special. As has already been mentioned those challenge cup tries were amazing and the argument that he should have got the Lance Todd has some weight. It shows Joels class that we've not missed Hicksy all that much, I was expecting a huge gap to be left but we've been very lucky in bagging a second Monaghan.

Dessie is my all time favourite Wire winger.
Perhaps Joel, Hicksy and Matt have / are better wingers but Dessie is a Wire legend.

I am not too sure about this but I suspect that some of the four players that are mentioned have still got memories from their first 12-18 months at this club when they and the rest of the team were subjected to some pretty shambolic treatment from sections of the crowd. I wasn't at Quins when Matt king lost his rag but I witnessed some jip the players were getting in perpignan airport after a pretty heavy defeat and the import players took the brunt of it (with stuff like "you ought to get on that plane and "£$% off back to Australia"icon_wink.gif. Now I could have it wrong and they could just be genuinely very cool but when a couple of them celebrate a try or victory they do it in a slightly more subdued manner than say Ryan Atkins who has not had to endure what the likes of Monas and King have been through. If that is the case that makes me sad because the performances of the team upto April 2009 should not be attributed to those players alone.

I met Matt King and Mike Monaghan in Perpignan last year. They are both very different characters, Matt is very outgoing and clearly likes to meet the fans, Mike seemed shy and definately out of his comfort zone. I expect he's very different to people who know him though. I would expect both of them have put all the events of their first 18 months at Warrington behind them. Professional sportsmen expect and receive abuse from a small minority of people (passion doesn't excuse it though) and most will shrug it off. Matt took it too heart I think and it boiled over at Quins that day. I felt it was more embarrasing to me as a Warringtonian that a small number of our fans could subject one of their own players to that. I wouldn't think it would be anywhere on his list of memories of his four years with us.