Well cooke has 26 try assists in his 4 seasons since he stopped playing with swain so maybe, just maybe, swain was the bigger influence on creating those try scoring opportunities.

Either way, neither Hull nor paul cooke have been anywhere near as effective without swain

I don't doubt that berrigan is a great player and will probably show that playing for the warriors. As you say, he didn't have teh best players with him at Hull, but more than that I'd say we didn't have a game plan which utilised his strengths. I'd have had him far more involved than agar ever did and had the players operating to support his style of play

Maybe, Id prefer to put that down to the abuse he recieved while trying to get on with his life, hopefully he deeply regrets the decision and im sure he will.

Or maybe swain was the bigger loss.

There's no way cooke would be getting 25+ try assists in our current team

Yeaman and Briscoe would be scoring a lot more, we would be a much better side, the Cooke of old that is.

I think it would be hard for most players in the world to get that many assists with our current playing style. I'd also wager that the best chance would be at fullback rather than a half or hooker.

Swain was a great player, probably the best of the era in which I've watched Hull, but I don't think attack is one of the key things we lost by his departure. Directly it's been more his leadership, tackling, and work ethic. The attacking problems have come from a combination of poor recruitment and either laziness off the ball or a conscious decision to preserve energy for in defence IMO, all of which came mostly from Peter Sharp. Obviously Swain leaving and Sharp arriving weren't far apart though, so it could be a bit of both, but I'd lean more towards Sharp for the demise of our attacking skill.

Whilst you can say we didn't attack under Sharp, you also have to take into account that he's been gone ages.

I said he started it, which he did. Then his number 2 took over and picked up where he left off. Agar's simply continued what he learnt from Sharp IMO. It still traces back to then.

It's like what happened at Bradford, McNamara just did pretty much what he'd seen Noble do, albeit with lesser and ageing players. Barge, barge, barge, out to the big winger (he tried to replace Vainikolo with Tupou). People stick to what they know.

Yup, spot on.

Sammut on the bench for Crusaders......?

here we go again can see it tommorrow hulls bid for sammut accepted just sorting out liitle details ect and should be here within a couple of weeks heard from a very good source who never lets me down

Sorry to drag up old ground but can anyone tell me if we can still sign sammut the way i understand the quota is that now we signed phelps we have no room for sammut and who are our quota/non fed players.

Maltese but Non-Fed

So is that a yay or nay?