Michael Monaghan for me, i didn't know F all about him and he didn't do much at 7. But once he moved to 9 he was Superb for us. Same with Chris Hicks, knew nothing about him but he's one of the best wingers i've ever personally seen play for us.

Graham Appoooooo

100% this. When I first saw him with Monas and King in Churchills, Hicks had a belly on him and looked all the ‘just the tag on’ people thought of him…
But wow, he was the best of the 3 and by some margin from the initial season.
He is my lads favourite player because this hatrick at Wembley.

Nick Fozzard was far better at Saints. He was forever knocking on for us.

Halliwell could be a good shout and more recently Wardle….

But the most obvious no one has picked up on…

BOB JACKSON

Halliwell lol

How about the young centre/ winger we bought from Wakefield who went on to be an outstanding second row forward......Ben Westwood

He was pretty useful and stood out in a pant team. I recall he was only on lone that first spell. Wasn’t anywhere near as good during his second spell.
I could say the same about Greg Mackey too.

Alan Bateman & Kevin Ellis - RU recruits that we didn't know much about, I certainly didn't expect much from, but turned out to be decent signings (or excellent in the case of Bateman!)

Could Chris bridge to centre be described as a pleasant surprise? He was signed as a young half want he? He was a fantastic centre.
Jon Clarke for 9?
Ben Westwood? Nobody thought he was going to turn out that good surely? Same could be said of Chris Hill?
Matty Russell first season was a huge surprise.
Rob Smyth maybe?

Burns is a good shout, so too are domic and Brent Grose.

just seen his name in the other list, vagana, he was a very pleasant surprise and somewhat filled the gap left by iestyn's disapointing departure

Simon Grix.

We signed him from a Halifax team that had just gone down and been the worst SL team ever. He was touted as this bright young talent but I was sceptical that we had signed anybody really significant.

What I really liked about Grix as a pleasant surprise was that every year I seemed to re-evaluate my expectations of him upwards and I would still end up being surprised how good he was.

Grix was the perfect combination of being an incredibly talented and complete player and also had great mentality. He had lots of injury set backs, but he always came back and was immediately great again, there never seemed to be a period of him "getting back to what he was", he was always at that level. He got moved around into different positions and he never seemed to be affected, he could always be relied on no matter what setbacks he'd had, how much he was being asked to compromise by moving positions, whether we were in good form or bad form, nothing bothered him, he was always able to be a top performer. Very, very few players are like that.

Also this might seem predictable coming from me but: Lee Briers

We signed him in the aftermath of selling Iestyn Harris who at the time was the game's biggest young superstar. Yes, Briers had had some promising games filling in for Bobbie Goulding during his ban, but who would have really believed that we were bringing in a player who was going to be better than Harris?