Fat hamster anyone?

Yeah stocky rounded cheeks, just trying to think who that reminds me of.

It's easy to criticise a manager for asking his players to change positions, but he has a limited sized squad & salary cap & must get a team together to compete in a high collision, high injury sport.
A manager in SL doesn't have the privilege of having specialist reserves in every position as in Premier League football ,many of whom are paid hundreds of thousands of pounds every week to sit in the stands for possibly months on end.

All very true and good points nine but a manager is paid not only to get it right but to get players in the right position and of course that's not always easy, with Appo and Briers we had two good players for one position, bearing in mind as you rightly point out about the limited squad size and cap that a manager is under, getting it right with who to keep or let go becomes crucial, perhaps one or the other should have been allowed to leave for the team to be strengthened elsewhere.

Yes it is easy with hindsight to pick holes and there is no criticism intended on my part just a few "what if" thoughts, I must admit that after all the calls that "we can't play without Briers" I thought Appo and Nat Wood hit it off well together and were good to watch.

You picked me up on "failing to get our real targets"? I believe I have now addressed that. I never made any comment about top players signing for another team.

We agree on Lillyman and I presume Ta'ai became a target once we started to make meaningful moves to sign him following his approach.

The club said they were after another Aussie prop. We got Cox (after Peacock had had a look at him) and Bailey right out of the bargain bucket on the naughty step. They may yet prove to be fantastic signings.

Not true.. all these players have agents, whose job it is to get them the best deals... clubs are made fully aware of player movements by said agents prior to deals being done.

if players arent available, they dont move... if they are available, you can rest assured clubs like warrington are made aware of this availability.

Players also use this agent whisper network to get better deals at their current club, as well as the best transfer away .. See Savelio using us to get a much improved deal at saints as an example.

I suppose all this paper talk & whispers of which top players might be coming is also not a bad tool to help with selling season tickets ,especially at early bird prices.
Maybe a gesture of goodwill by the club would be to keep early bird prices at least until the squad is finalised.

When Appo played 6 he got his hands on the ball a lot and he was an explosive runner who could make breaks. However he was not a great kicker or passer and he would not organise a team, whereas Briers was all three of those. The other halfback at the time was Nat Wood who was also more of a running halfback which was a good foil for Briers but pairing Wood and Appo meant we lacked something.

During that run in to the playoffs in 2003, when Appo played himself in to the Dream Team, it was basically about smashing weaker teams. Appo got a hat-trick against Wakefield in the last game at Wilderspool, he got 4 tries against Halifax who got relegated with 0 points, we beat lower ranked teams but we didn't take down any of the top sides. That was always going to be the difficulty if we played even a fully fit focused Appo at 6 ahead of Briers, against the top sides we needed a more elite halfback not just an explosive runner who could do damage against weaker defences.

I think the best place for Appo was fullback but he could be frustrating there. I have a memory of Appo playing for Huddersfield against us at Wilderspool when he first came over (Tony Smith brought him to the UK when he was Hudds coach). He was playing fullback and I remember he had a complete lack of urgency when we kicked to him. He ambled about to the ball looking like he didn't care whether anyone was chasing or not. I thought, this fullback is garbage, just put a kick in behind him and you can pin him on his line. Then we kicked straight to him and he had a bit of open field and he skinned the first man and broke 40 yards upfield in no time. It was like watching one of those NFL special teams returners flying past everybody. I don't remember much else from him that game though.

I have one other strange memory of Appo as he made one of the two most memorable demonstratons of pace I ever saw at Wilderspool. One was Henare going the length down the touchline from a scrum near our own line when Sculthorpe got the ball out of a scrum and Henare just burned straight like an arrow 90 yards. The other - possibly even more impressive, was when Alan Hunte did a similar move against us for Salford and scored...but Appo, who was on the other wing, incredibly nearly chased him down across the diagonal of the pitch and was virtually level by the time Hunte scored. Given that Hunte was quick, to run him down across the diagonal like that where he must have had to run an extra 10 or 15 yards was unbelievable. I remember seeing the replay on TV from the high angle camera, it was like seeing a greyhound bounding across the pitch coming out of nowhere.

Graham Appo - often looked like he didn't care but when he was fit and in the mood he was a phenomenal runner.

I was in the Bevan stand that night, the pace was incredible. It's my main memory of Appo.

Thanks again sally cinnamon a nice little trip down memory lane, for some reason Appo did seem to take a lot of confidence from playing alongside Nat Wood whereas Briers always had confidence in himself, very often I've been left frustrated by Briers but as history shows it was just the same with most of the wire teams he played with over his time.

I suppose Briers was a bit of an enigma being part of some of the worst teams we've had to great displays at Wembley then just falling short of in two Grand Finals, but always there just like your excellent memory, cheers that was a good read.