Really it just means a player can see what's in front of them in defensive structure and numbers and they have an ability to react very quickly to the opportunities that they see. Briers was very good at this. Brough has it too and Luke gale, sandow was great when his head was on it.

Regarding the next coach (if the club ate even thinking baoht this at the moment) maybe with the whole covid and flights situation as it is, this time it won't be Kirkpatrick disappearing to Australia to knock on front doors trying tonubearth a new coach or new marquee player (I always view it as being a little bit like sending Carl Pilkington). I honestly think we would havebeeb better off looking at signing the likes of jake Trueman or even throwing some serious cash at Harry Smith and giving Anderson or henderson a chance at head coach (if they would want it). I'm not writing off Riley Dean BTW I really like what I have seen from him so far, I'm talking more about the results of the past 3 seasons searching.

This might appear as a minor point when compared to the importance of the coach, but I think the more youngsters that come through the academy into the first team, the stronger the side will be. These kids will play for the shirt and run themselves into the ground for the team. I think it's a bit of a tribal mentality. That's not the same commitment that I think you get when you import a big star, particularly one from abroad. At the end of the day they are professionals first and players second. Their livelihood is uppermost in their minds even if they still wan't a cup winners medal as well.

The right coach is certainly the key factor, but I think getting high quality from our Academy is probably the next most important.

All the more reason to bring in someone who gives youth a chance and picks on form. If we had the next Paul Sculthorpe ripping it up in the reserves competing directly with Jason Clark for a jersey, who do you think would get the nod?

]

Given how good Monaghan was for us I’m baffled as to why he is being used as an example of a poor “Moran signing” especially as we don’t even know if that was Moran who pushed for it. "

I'd even suggest the signing of Joel Monaghan was an unneeded (at the time) signing and more about the attention it got, considering he was brought in for a guy who had just scored a hat trick in a CC final.
'"

I wasn't suggesting he was a bad signing. I was more suggesting that at the time he was a typical Wire signing of getting someone in who would create some headlines (we don't really need to go over the reason he ended up here?).

It wasn't like at that exact moment a winger was desperately needed?

We kinda did, spider was on his last legs, and had been considering retiring.

The way we did it allowed him to get a full years salary as a pay off and it not count on the salary cap, as was mentioned at the time, he was probably coming over for 2012 when hicks retired anyway. We just got him 12 months early.

He wasn't going anywhere until his canine indiscretion.

Look, my point isn't that Monaghan wasn't a good signing, just he was typical of the type of signing that we have become infamous for. As another poster has already said, we are an agent's dream. It would be little surprise if we get first option on most players (domestic or overseas) who are after a 'fresh move' (code for more cash).

While these type of high profile, fantasy footy, style signings are exciting they have done little but just put a bigger target on our backs. As has been mentioned already, the actual route we should be taking is making our academy the best in the league. With that in place, a proper director of rugby instead of one playing Facebook games, and a top level coach installed, then we might actually see some long term consistency with our results.

I still don’t get your point on Monaghan. He was a success so what’s the issue? He became available when he wouldn’t otherwise have been and we replaced a quality player coming to the end of his career with another quality player who we got a good few years out of.

I agree that we don’t produce enough good young players but I’m wondering if that’s partly due to not having the amateur RL footprint that our competitors have? I’m not sure how the club solves that.

The point is, from the outside, during the Moran era, we have always looked like a club that prefers a high profile signing, rather than one that wants to invest as significantly in its academy and the production of more lower profile individuals.

Kevin penny when smith didn't want him....

Yes on blue chip signings someone like middleton or moran may have some involvement but it should be a player the coach has asked for not just a signing because they want to see them in a wire shirt.

This gets said a lot but I don't see any real evidence that it's related to whether a player came from the academy.

During my time as a Wire fan we've generally been behind Wigan, Leeds, Saints in terms of the share of regular first teamers that came through our own academy, but there were two periods where we did have a lot of Academy products in the team.

One was in the earlier Cullen era where we had Hilton, Paul Wood, Stevens, Noone, Wainwright, Sibbitt, Mark Gleeson, Hulse and then he introduced Pickersgill and Riley.

The second was in the later TS era where we had Cooper, Currie, Evans, O'Brien, Ormsby, Penny, Patton, Livett, King, Philbin, Dwyer.

Some of these players were good, some were ordinary, some would obviously run into the ground for the shirt, others were just run of the mill in terms of attitude. But I don't remember thinking in these eras that these guys were noticeably better than the players around them or noticeably more committed.

I think there is an important point around doing due diligence when you sign a big star, either from the NRL or SL. I remember reading something about Sir Alex Ferguson's approach to recruitment, that he never followed a 'galactico' approach and the one obvious time he did (Juan Sebastian Veron) didn't work out. He liked to sign players on the way up who had the hunger to win things, rather than players who had already won a lot and were mentally in a position where they could have coasted.

Sometimes Wire have been in a position where we have signed players who had won SL or NRL Grand Finals, and we thought it was great we are getting someone with 'winning experience' but they probably looked at Warrington and thought we're probably not going to win a GF, it's more about securing a good contract (maybe the last big contract they will get in their careers). With some recent NRL signings I've wondered whether we were really just signing players who were out of contract, couldn't get what they wanted from an NRL club and their agent wanted to park them in SL for a year or two on a good deal, hoping a club with a vacancy in their position would have more cap space a couple of years down the line.

Some big stars have great attitudes and bring that wherever they go. Jamie Peacock won everything at Bradford, went to Leeds and wanted to achieve more. We had that with Adrian Morley, Brett Hodgson. In the NRL you get a certain type of Aussie competitor personality, who even if they aren't a big name, will identify with the team they are in and buy in: Greg Mackey, Nat Wood, Chris Hicks. These are well worth finding.

I think we need to do a lot more due diligence into the attitudes of players that we target and not just get hoodwinked into agents' marketing, but I don't think this is an issue about whether players come from the Academy or not. If we had an Academy that produced better talent (better than those players listed above) then in a salary-cap constrained league its an advantage because we'd always have a pool of low-cost young players to bring into the squad, and even when they get future contracts, its easier to keep a unit together like Leeds did, where most of those individuals were paid less than they could have done had they gone to other clubs (inevitably the odd one will leave like Calderwood did). Although if you do produce world class stars like Harris and Scully you can't expect to keep them on the cheap in a team that's not competing at the top, just because they came through the Academy.

So when do you define the start of the 'Moran era'?
Do you mean when he first became a director in 1998 or when he took ownership in 2004?

Before he became a director in 1998 we were the club that was selling off our Academy products Harris, Sculthorpe), and chasing signings like Andy Currier, Martin Dermott, Mike Ford, Richie Eyers, Paul Hulme. I'm not sure this was a particularly long-term mentality.

In the years between 1998 and 2004, we were a club who went for ageing internationalsreal talent[/i in the Academy. We've churned out a lot of so-so SL standard players and been willing to give them chances, but only Wood, Cooper, Currie and Riley really worthy of being in a title-challenging team.

b) The recruitment of outside players improved from 2004 to 2013 but has gone backwards since. Recruitment has become harder for all clubs as the market from the NRL has tightened and there's real scarcity of props and halfbacks but some other clubs (Wigan, Cas, Salford) have been notably better than us at finding underrated gems. Wigan in particular signed a number of players that we scoffed at like Blake Green, Matty Smith, but then went on to win Grand Finals. The quality of recruitment also seemed to decline after Andy Gatcliffe left.

I think there is a real danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water. This season isn’t over yet, why are people talking like it is? Where is that desire to win?
I enjoyed the game on Friday as a contest between 2 very committed teams. We were dominant in the first half and didn’t get the rewards that the effort deserved but it was fine margins between scoring and not, some days you hold the ball sometimes you lose it (or it gets dislodged). Wigan showed on 2 clear occasions that they were prepared to risk everything to prevent a try (I’m still unclear why the second didn’t warrant yellow) but this isn’t a rant about refs.
Of course I was disappointed by the result and the efforts of our halfbacks in particular, Widdop was a real curates egg, Austin MIA.
The reality is that our squad is fixed for this season and at this late stage so is our coach.
So my answer to the question is “ we don’t go anywhere”. Price is aware as the rest of us that to keep his job and any future r3turn to the NRL he needs to win big. There is still a chance to do it. The squad for Tuesday shows changes that I had hoped to see (maybe not Akouala), buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.


(Personally I would be casting out feelers for a new coach if I was in charge, just in case.)

“where do we go from here.”

Well, I for one am going to get that haircut, got to stay one haircut in front these days.

Wherever we go, let’s not go to the same place we went last time we were wondering where do we go from here