coach Rich Agar
player Paul McNicholas

It's all about opinions isn't it? I've seen some great players in my time and Fitz is up with the best of them for me. Ask the Wire fans what they thought of his performance on Monday and I think the majority will tell you he was fantastic, his workrate for me is incredible and whilst I appreciate his play sometimes looks to slow down our attacking options the positives far outway the negatives for me. I think he will without doubt be a player that is talked about highly when he leaves.

Ask Saints fans what they thought of Lauaki last year (if they could see him), and Maiava in the home game against them, doesn't place both as all-time Hull greats.

I think Fitzgibbon will be well thought of, and rightly so, but in that top band of Hull players? No.

Genuine question, please don't think I'm trying to be argumentative for the sake of it and not answer; why do you think his positives FAR outweigh his negatives?

Personally, I think his positives are his tackling and his leadership, with his negatives being the aforementioned slowness on the ball, a lack of impact in the tackle most of the time, and his seeming insistance on playing 80 minutes resulting in fatigue-induced errors. It's a lot closer run thing IMO, but would be helped massively if he wasn't at 1st or 2nd receiver so often and played a bit less minutes. I marvel at the fact that he poses as many of the problems Radford did at loose forward, but because his tackle stats are more impressive people are willing to overlook it whilst Radford was ripped to shreds.

The reason I mentioned the wire fans was because his performance last week was no different to the performances that we get off him week in week out for me and they thought he was outstanding. It wasn't a one off performance like Lauaki or Maiava and whilst I realise your using them two to make a point there really isn't comparison imo.

I don't think your been argumentative, it's a message board we all have different opinions and I agree his positives are his tackling, his leadership and for me his never say die attitude, he never shakes work and is always willing to continue to take the ball up when others seem less willing. We would probably be even more effective if we spelled him and he played less minutes but I'm not sure that it is him who insists on playing 80mins, I think this is probably down to the coach and the desperate situation we've found ourselves in and the coach thinking rightly or wrongly that he needs his most experience players on the park. I also partly agree about him taking the ball up at 1st or 2nd receiver but again I would question the game plan because like you say these are the tactics that Hull have used for a while.

Fair points. I don't want it to seem like I don't rate or appreciate Fitzgibbon as a player, I just think that he's not as good as some of the hype thrown his way. I suspect some of it comes from the fact his good attitude and work ethic has stood out in the squad over the past 2 seasons and on the back of the previous 2. I wonder whether it would have done so much in the 2004-2006 teams.