Quote: morrisseyisawire "He deserves an ovation during warm-up and he'll get one from me, but from kick-off he's the opposition and the enemy and I'll be hoping Chris Hill tramples all over the top of him.
As for the importance of his signing, yes it was significant but I actually think the signing of Andrew Johns was the watershed moment in our recent history. Irrespective of what you think of his performances in a wires jersey, or the way the team played in his prescence, that signing made the WORLD sit up and say "WHOA! These guys mean business!"
And we did, and we're still riding the wave and furthering the cause.'"
I wouldn't say there was one particular watershed, there were a succession of key moments in about 3 years that signalled we were a club on a different level to what we had been:
- opening the new stadium
- Simon Moran taking majority ownership
- signing Gleeson
- bringing Johns over for a short spell
- signing Morley
- signing King and Monaghan
Johns was important but possibly gets overplayed as it was basically a gimmick, he came for three games. That will have raised the club's profile overseas but then so did signing Allan Langer and he did two years at a time when he was still good enough to play Origin.
The importance of Morley I think was his attitude and professionalism gave credibility to the fact that Warrington was a serious club and not just a chance for a payday. The problem that "new money" gives is it attracts players that are past their best (and their agents) who sense an opportunity to bid up their salary and play a couple of years when they don't expect or are really driven to win trophies or play their peak rugby, they are just riding on the back of past achievements. Salford are going to have this problem. Man City did for a bit when guys like Robinho came in and loafed about.
The danger for us when we first started to spend money was that players wouldn't respect Warrington in the way they would respect signing for Bradford, Saints or Wigan, we were a mid-ranking club with money so the interest in us was motivated by money.
Morley came over, signed a long term deal, and delivered quality performances from the start and also brought a great professionalism to the club. From then on that changed the respect players showed us because this was a club that had signed the best forward of the modern era and he was taking us seriously, so we were a serious club not just a payday transit lounge.
Another point about Morley that sometimes gets forgotten is how much he had matured on the field. Remember when he signed he was known as the bad boy of SL and then the bad boy of the NRL. People were muttering about how often would we keep him on the field as he would spend most of his time either injured or banned.
How many red cards did Morley get with us?
How many bans did he get for his disciplinary record?
