What a ridiculous comment.
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I bet Hooper played as many minutes in the red V at hooker as Hohaia
http://www.saints.org.uk/saints/match.php?seq=4
Yeah, I wish I'd have picked someone else at 9 instead of Hohaia, and in reality if that team ever played it would be so good we'd be able to cope with Shane Cooper (who I have at 7), Jason Hooper (13) or even Theo Fages at 9 and it would go well.
Micky Higham was a good hooker in his own right. He just had the misfortune to be at Saints when KC was in his pomp then had to then deal with Roby coming through as well. In another era he’d have held our 9 shirt for a decade and done a really good job.
St Helens
1. Wellens
2. Makinson
3. Hunte
4. Newlove
5. Sullivan
6. Martin
7. Long
8. Graham
9. Roby
10. Walmsley
11.Joynt
12. Gilmour
13. Sculthorpe
Aus/NZ/Pacific Islands
1. Phil Vievers
2. Darren Albert
3. Jamie Lyon
4. Mal Meninga
5. Jarrod McCracken
6. Tea Ropati
7. Shane Cooper
8. Jason Cayless
9. Jason Hooper
10. Apollo Perelini
11. Dave Fairleigh
12. Peter Shields
13. Darren Smith
Hohaia was one of those players who had a decent set of skills but wasn’t quite right for for any position.
Him and Laffranchi were a disastrous pair of signings - among the worst in my time following Saints - not because they were especially bad players, but because neither of them were suited to the job we signed them for, and they maxed us out on the overseas quota which made it nigh on impossible to strengthen elsewhere when we badly needed to.
Glad you called out Laffranchi because he was an awful signing on big money; consistently underwhelming and rose little if at any above what say the likes of what Jonkers, Hargreaves or Stankevitch ever did.
He seemed to fly under the radar at a point when Wigan bullied Saints and he was as dangerous with ball in hand as a Peter Tatchell stick up a with a spoon.
At that point we had a great track record of excellent overseas signings such as Fairleigh, Shields, Hooper, Smith, Talau, Cayless, Gidley Maurie etc but then followed it up with also rans such as these two, Vea, Manu, Burns, Flannery, Perry etc and to a lesser extent Douglas. Ill add I was never a Walsh fan either. Hugely overrated. There was the odd gem like Soliola and Pulutua but generally the overseas signings declined from 2006 to around 2015
Hohaia was also similarly underwhelming but most of us called out the signing was not ‘a fit.’ Both were not lazy by any means but in big contracts they were C minus at best.
I wouldn’t say Puletau (spelt wrong probably) was a gem. He was the epitome of a flat track bully. Great against Wakefield at home on a sunny day but went missing when the going got tough and failed to turn up against the likes of Wigan.
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Sometimes a poster makes a left field statement and you think WOW! Reacher has done that and he is right. Lance I feel for, like Crosse and Blackwell soup he does what it says on the tin, is it Covent Garden soup quality no it's not. That lad gave us what he had and just like Jack Welsby won us a grand final. His salary and longevity of contract is not his fault. Perry was our Burgess and you get stuck with those charlatans, sadly.
I always thought Puletua was a bit of a "hybrid player" seen as a prop but used in the second row and loose forward roles as well, don't think the club used him as a grafting prop making hard yards. That showed up in the very tight games when space was tight, despite that he had a pretty good scoring rate with 40 tries from 130+ games, good signing for us until he got a bit injury prone in his latter year.
I would also add Graham Liptrot, one of the best passers of a rugby ball I have seen, very much like Cooper, wrist and what seemed to be a squeezing out of the ball from his hand. Very deceptive and difficult to read, he should be teaching junior rugby players that art, it is something that is difficult or impossible to learn later, more for 8 to 14 year olds to perfect.
I watched Saints through the Karalius, Lippy and Dwyer ownership of the hooker role. Whilst the role has changed totally. What I would say is all three above top class club players bordering on international status. Roby and Keiron are and where world class superstars.
I see what you're getting at. I knew what we were signing and he met expectations for me. He didn't play well all the time and I think early 2013 for a good period, he was poor.
But 2014, I thought he was very good at 6. Also a major contributor to us finishing top with a fairly difficult drop goal at Leeds.
Defensively, he was solid for a little bloke & it's sad a grand final went that way for him getting flattened by that pudding
Sad or not Ralph it won us the game and a second trophy, just like Hardacre won us this one. That is what makes it great for me, underneath the Rogues of this world are spitting venom because they could have and should have, but like in 1971 they didn't. The only time they have done that to us is Murrayfield. 3-1 I will take that. Just for clarity young Welsby won us that one but they won't see that, nor will lam or Softacre.
Wasn’t his fault that we signed a guy that had played all his best rugby at full back and interchange hooker to be our 6 and then our kicking/organising 7 barely spent any time fit, if he’d spent all his time with Walsh alongside him he could have been really effective as a stand off in the Maguire mold. The real error though was giving him a 4 year contract.
Laffranchi was unlucky that Perry was such a flop and hardly played. IMO, Laffranchi was signed to be a mobile prop - running at gaps, getting his hands through, making half breaks, quick PTB. With Perry stealing a salary sat on his arse, Laffranchi had to take on hard-yards duties that he wasn't suited for, and his performances suffered. Couldn't fault him for effort.
You're right about our overseas signings dropping in quality for a period, too. A lot down to bad luck, though, as many/most looked at least as good on paper yet for whatever reason didn't sparkle.