There's a strange phenomenon with players that come through the Academy, when they first emerge they get overrated by our fanbase, but those that are good enough to become fixtures in the first team seem to become underrated and underappreciated over time.

I think its that everybody is hoping for the next player where we strike gold like Harris or Sculthorpe, so when they are on the fringes of the team or play their first few games, the hype goes overboard. But after a while they probably get judged more critically as Academy products than they would have been if they signed from outside. Wainwright suffered from that like Riley.

Thinking about Wainwright, and the stick he copped at the end of his first spell with us, there was another player who suffered a similar experience soon after but never recovered from it: Jon Roper.

Neither of them had been long term underperformers, they basically had one bad season where they lost the confidence of the fans and DVDV, but in both cases the fans were savage. Now its 20 years on, the Roper thing looks OTT. From what I remember he'd been quite popular in his first few seasons, and we had high hopes for him as a home grown product. In 1999 he was in the GB train-on squad. Then he had a few bad games in 2000 and the crowd turned really nasty. Worse than they had on Wainwright. With Wainwright it was impatient moans and groans, but the Fletcher Street End REALLY hated Roper in 2000, it was malicious. He got the kind of stick that was usually reserved for Bobby Goulding!

DVDV farmed him out to Salford, and I think he had a bit of time with Castleford then disappeared. His decline was unusually steep.

Nobody ever brings up Roper as a player where we say "what might have been", but if my memory is right, he only really had a few bad months of form and he was kicked to the curb. Ryan Atkins went through spells like that a couple of times and came back from it. Was Roper really a lost cause, or with a more supportive coach and sympathetic fan base, could he have been brought back to the level he was in the previous couple of seasons?

Interesting point, SC. Cooper wasn’t tremendously popular before he went to the NRL, and even now there seems to be a section of support that under rates him. So far (touch wood) Philbin seems to have avoided the over praise then turn on him cycle.
I also wonder to what extent Wilderspool played a part in what happened. You could often hear a single fan’s withering comment which was picked up by others,this doesn’t seem to apply at the HJ.

Yeah I think Cooper is underappreciated, probably he slipped under the radar because he emerged in the team at a time when we had a strong pack and we weren't desperate for the next new hope so weren't pinning massive expectations on him.

Steve Pickersgill seemed to get more hype than either Cooper or Paul Wood. There was serious buzz about him when he was coming through.

The Wilderspool point is interesting too. Wilderspool was more cliquey in terms of certain types of supporters congregating in different parts of the ground, eg pondlife corner and the Fletcher Street End. In the Fletch you had a type of supporter, generally male, aged about 35 to 60, who had been going since the 60s/70s/80s, had a grumpy cynical attitude and also a complete certainty that they were the ultimate authority on rugby league. Their general view of the world was:any Wire coach was a total idiot, there were tons of lads out there at Woolston Rovers who were better than the tosh we put on the field but the club wasn't looking at them, the RFL was in league with Wigan and Saints and the refs were taking backhanders, they would always moan about who got named the sponsor's man of the match and when the crowd figure was announced they'd say that was a lie too. They had old school views about not playing players out of position, someone is a 6 not a 7 or vice versa, the fullbacks main job was to tackle as the last line of defence and so on. If a player left Warrington to join another club it was a mortal sin. Once this lot had decided that a player was in their sights, the barracking they would get would be relentless and week after week. Wainwright and Roper were victims.

I used to stand in this part of the Fletch in my teens and twenties, because I liked the raucous atmosphere but these types did get on my nerves. I'm sure they came to the HJ too but I think the stadium move diluted them around the ground more. They fed off each other's anger and I think that lessened at the HJ.

A few years later I moved to Leeds and started watching Super League games in the Skyrack pub, and you would get the Leeds version of these Fletcher Street know-alls, they had the same kind of world view. Sometimes Gary Schofield would be in there stood in the middle of them spouting off and they hung on his every word. His media columns said the same stuff they believe too. The Leeds version were also obsessed with Geoff Boycott and the power struggles of who was on the committee at Yorkshire Cricket Club. I remember they had it in for Karl Pratt and they treated Tony Smith as a suspicious outsider. They didn't seem as enthralled as the younger Leeds fans with the high tempo offloading game that he brought in when they started winning, and after that Cup final when they lost to Hull they turned on him.

When i see comments like this i think instantly of Toby King who seems to get pelters on here. hen i watch Toby King i see a very good defender who could still improve his attacking game. Maybe the Wire fans wouldn't notice until he leaves. Just an observation. Same goes for Livett. Is it a coaching problem?

Good observation by your good self and others on this topic. It is difficult to understand sometimes the anti comments against some players wearing the P&B. When I stood in the South Stand before moving across the pitch to the North Stand there was this bloke who stood near us who ranted and raved every week against whoever happened to be the 'current' scapegoat. You had to think, what is going on in his head ? Fans have their favourites, of course they do but some of the vitriol aimed at others is sometimes quite baffling. Yes everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course they are but sometimes

Someone has mentioned there are rumblings about Livet returning to Warrington. Good news.

Greg Inglis