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"). 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.