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?

Two excellent nominations.

Re Jon Clarke.
He was a steady hooker. I think his best games were when he was moved to loose forward in 2005/06? That was a surprise.

Micky Higham. Came to us from Wigan with the “one trick Mick” tag but actually offered much more than that.

Agreed about Higham. I always rated him at Saints when he rotated with Cunningham in pre Roby days. His stint at Wigan i recall was when they were having a few poor seasons? so may have brought his stock down a bit. Was disappointed when he left us for Leigh.

In terms of coaching - Tony Barrow.

No prior coaching experience.

Took over from Reg Bowden side as a caretaker 6th March 1986 (Bowden was sacked with us in 6th place in the league P17 W11 L6)

Won the premiership after 2 months in charge 18th May 1986 as massive underdogs.

On Jan 4th 1987 had taken us to the top of the league, and we end the season with a creditable 3rd place with Phil Blake scoring 22 tries and a 15 game unbeaten run.

Barrow was sacked after losing away at Castleford 23rd October 1988 in 7th place (P8 W3 L4) replaced by Johnson. We ended the season in 11th.

We were very demanding of coaches in those years it seems.

I remember a lot of people wanted Steve Price to be sacked at the end of the 2019 season. If he had been he could be in this category also - took us to 2 finals in his first year, won the Challenge Cup in his second and delivered two major big game victories over Saints!

Steve Price never failed to surprise. Particularly at the end of 2019, 2020 and 2021.

I don't think anyone was surprised by the end of 2020 or 2021...