Dead right. Anyway those days are behind us. So let's move on and look forward to the season. RL is back.

I think King will get an offer on much reduced terms, £50k on the cap is peanuts for a starting player. I get that there are tales about his application under Powell, but I would take most of that with a pinch of salt. As someone mentioned earlier, the Wire in Bondi podcast is quite illuminating, particularly Ellis Longstaff’s…

Yes Barb.
That was a great podcast with Ellis.
He nails home exactly what most people thought about Powell.
And candid enough to let know the feeling of Stuart Middleton about Powell too, however nothing that SM had already publicly said in so many words about Powell, so it’s nothing Stuart could regard as a confidentiality letdown.
Powell was a mistake that they allowed to go on far too long.

Makes me think that the club should do something for Cooper and recognise the player he was to Warrington.
A vailed showing Wire that they accept the mistake made letting him move on, but importantly, to restore an exit to retirement at Wire, in recognition to Coops that he never got to experience because of Powell.

Rumours on Saints and Wigan forums that we are in for Matty Lees for 2026.

thats been posted on Warriors fans forum (if your not referring to the Wigan page on RL Fans) too by a usually reliable source on there. Also suggesting Knowles off to NRL

His 2024 stats are a little underwhelming.

Lees
258 carries for 1731m at 6.71 average gain.

Vaughan
279 carries for 2290m at 8.21 average gain.

Teams very often have a designated prop to gain ground, Vaughan is certainly ours, we'll often set that up with Vaughan taking the carry immediately after a quick play the ball, in the same way Saints do with Walmsley (when he's fit).

He defends well, tackle count was 2nd highest prop in SL last year for tackles made, though his missed tackle rate was higher than I would like.

He is aggressive and defends well, my only concern with him would be discipline - has got a few bans in him.

So IF we brought Lees in, alongside Byrne, that would give us a prop rotation of (in no particular order) Lees, Yates, Byrne, Harrison, Philbin plus youngsters. Hardworking but lacks punch I would say.

Yep "big bopper" still required. But even with Lees and Byrne the pack has a little bit more aggression than we have currently.

Surely we can find a NZ, Samoan or Tongan impact monster with a decent engine? A Patrick Mago 18 stone type.

Of course there is more to a player than just average gains like tackles, offloads, dummy runs & the important bits that cannot be measured.

It would be interesting to see what sort of pack we'd come up with if we just selected the players with the best average gains in each position out of all the clubs.

Of course there is more than stats but stats are important otherwise Opta wouldn't exist and performance teams wouldn't buy data from them or fit GPS trackers on players. To be honest in this age of robotic "middles" - stats like metres made and tackles vs missed tackles are quite telling.

Stats showed Vaughan as head and shoulders our best prop. I wouldn't disagree with that.

Robotic, that’s what Roy Asotasi must have been but someone had removed his batteries.

IMO Lees is massively overrated.