Funny that, cos Powell hauled Richardson off yesterday. I cannot remember Richardson having a good game for us. Maybe pre covid against saints which feels like a lifetime ago.

After the years of Aussie coaches at the Wire & a club hierarchy believing that everything from Down under is best ,i am looking forward to seeing an English coach at the helm. Perhaps our younger players may start to get more game time & be encouraged to flourish instead of having to deal with the spectre of an import coming in to displace them.

And you would get a potential match winner.

Agree with most of your post except this. He had 1 good season at Saints then injuries and the emergence of Steve Prescott lost him his place.

I can't remember his transfer fee, but we definitely got his best years, albeit in a mostly mediocre side. Saints fans would probably have objectively seen his transfer as a waste of money and wages.

Fortunately we had an emerging Lee Penny to replace him.

I have seen Savelio play a few times this season and I have been impressed with him. He has nailed down a regular starting spot and appears to have matured. When he was with us it looked like he wanted to hand off every player on the pitch to show how strong he was. For a big bloke he covers a lot of ground. He applies a lot of pressure on kickers and he is always trying to get back to scramble to cover breaks or mop up kicks. His defence is pretty solid too.
I think if Hull FC keep progressing he might be one that we look at to say he was one that got away.

I thought he was good for us to be honest and was a bit disappointed we let him go.

How about Ian Sibbit? Good player for us but I was surprised when Melbourne signed him. Don't really recall how he went in the NRL but he didn't seem quite the same player when he came back.

Sibbitt was rubbish and maintained that level at a baffled Melbourne and thereafter.

There is only one player we've released in the last 15 years that I've gone "Damn I think that's a mistake" and that was out of our hands.

That player is Peter Hiku.

That was one of the most surreal episodes in my rugby league lifetime. I don't know what Sibbit's agent was getting paid but he was certainly earning it. I wonder how many times Sibbitt hung up the phone and checked it wasn't April 1st before he started dancing round the garden.

Little known fact - Melbourne's then head of recruitment was sacked the following year when he thought he'd signed young protege Ieystn Harris and some fella called Keith turned up in Australia with a green duck in a nappy.

Was he related to Peta Hiku (who scored 10 tries in 11 games for us in 2017) ?

Andy Gregory was the "missing piece" in Wigan's jigsaw. Had he stayed with us, WE may have been a dominant force. The pack was better than Wigan's , and we'd already added Joe Ropati to our ranks, and we had been turning them over at the time. Our loss was a massive gain for them

His replacement, the superb Keith Holden, only lasted a year, until he stepped onto a Swinton landmine