Quote Standee="Standee"Ask yourself this, you are a fan of another SL club that has aspirations to regularly make the top 4, your club announces the signing of Radford from Hull FC, are you [igenuinely[/i happy about it?'"
Radford is the type of player that very few fans would get excited about signing, not because of who he is, but because of his style of play. When people think of what attributes a good second row forward need, most will think of speed, power and the ability to offload under pressure. Teams would become very predictable if this were how all coaches perceived the ideal second row to be.
Radford is a completely different type of second row to someone like Jon Wilkin, who people will no doubt compare him to. Radders has his flaws, and lacks speed, but he is one of the best defensive forwards in the league and it constantly takes gang tackles from the opposition defence to stop his runs. Rather than been explosive, he grinds teams down.
Wilkin or another player of his mould could have a very mediocre game, but have one burst of pace and score a try and people would leave the ground saying how brilliant he was. A Radford style player could do everything right in a game that was expected of them and take 18 hit ups off load 6 times and make 30 tackles, and a lot of people would still say that it was a poor performance.
Radders may not catch the eye, but is still far more than an average second row imo, although I would agree he may not be everyone’s cup of tea as a captain.