After Wire fans posted a bucketload of predictions three games into Kevin Penny's career claiming he's a dead cert to better the achievements of the greatest wingers in the history of the sport (Boston, Vollenhoven, Sullivan, Offiah etc.) the only response can be: EPIC FAIL!

The lesson here is simple: when RLFANS members with keen judgment tell you they are "concerned" by a player's defence you cannot sweep such worries under the carpet whilst chirping "He's faster than Offiah and scores tries for fun!".

Kevin Penny ....


.... Brimah Kebbie!

Enough said frankly

This is one sad, sad thread.
Think a couple of you need to grow up

Hopefully, the Wigan club and supporters have taken this into account when it comes to Shaun Ainscough. Luckily, we're being pretty realistic and patient with him at the moment.

Ainscough is a much better prospect than Penny was though. It was obvious from the start that Penny was no good.

Hull Fc will take Penny, they want better than Calderwood.

I wouldn't say I'm a great fan of Penny, but he's 21 years old. It's not as if he's the finished product, and neither is he to blame for some of the hype that came his way.

Penny has talent. He now has a good manager. If he doesn't make it fair enough, but do we really need threads like this singling out young British lads just to score cheap points against opposition fans.

It's less to do with trolling Wire supporters (which is, admittedly, funny) than injecting a dose of reality into the heads of knuckleheaded fans of all description who see a junior play a blinder in his first few games and automatically assume he'll go on to win MoS and captain GB to an Ashes victory.

The "Penny for GB" fiasco that followed his debut highlighted the sheer tactical ignorance of a considerable percentage of RL supporters who were quite prepared to select a player who COULD NOT DEFEND IN ANY WAY against the most tactically ruthless RL team on the planet on the offchance he received good service and managed to outsprint his opposite number!!

I mean, Martin Offiah - who in his final season was a better player than Penny will ever be - often went entire games against the Kangaroos with little more than scraps to live on. And when he did get the ball it took every inch of his ability to do something with it. Oh - and Offiah had better service than any GB winger's seen in the last five years or more.

SL's work is cut out for it trying to increase the throughput and standard of juniors when a weighty chunk of fans are totally incapable of objectively analysing the strengths and weaknesses of a player. Perhaps it's also a reason behind our crap coaches ...

To be fair, Penny made the GB training squad that first year, and also the Dream Team, so it wasn;t just the knucklehead fans who were predicting a big future for him.

The facts are that he has gone backwards (his defence wasn't as exposed when he first came into the team, a certain Test centre, who should have been nurturing him, has IMO done a lot of damage to his career), but he is working hard in the 2nd team, and under Smith he has every chance of doing well in the game.

With the ball in space he could be frightening, some of the tries he scored were genuine class. We have had fast players before, this isn;t just about pace. If he can work on some other areas of his game, then he can have a good career in RL. Look at the stats page for him, he doesn;t have an amateur team to his name, he came to the game late. He has plenty to lear, I'm happy to see him get that chance.

How do you know how good or bad Penny will be in the future?

Offiah's final season with London Broncos (yes, I know he later played for Salford) was particularly marked by his laziness and lack of commitment. I doubt you could level that at young Penny. Get off the kid's back.

The Dream Team is picked by knucklehead fans.

Penny will be released at the end of his four year(!) contract and never heard of again. I will be absolutely shocked if there is any other outcome.

Doesn't suit the mentality of the British "arrogant git, who does he think he is", when somebody has great confidence in themselves.

As for not being able to defend, these wonderfully knowledgable people who obviously watched Warrington every week, understood that the whole of the left edge was a problem, defensively. This has know been rectified, Penny is learning in the reserves, bearing in mind he had played a couple of seasons, in total prior to his first team debut.

As for 'EPIC FAIL', I sincerely hope he rams it down your throat, as genuine attacking threats are in abundance for England, aren't they?

To utilise the venacular of the teenager, which appears to be someting the OP is familiar with; what a loser.

Which Calderwood have you been watching then?

Penny has been captaining the reserve side, is playing very well and still has the enthuiasm and skill we know he's got. Tony Smith isn't rushing him and rightly so. His time will come.

Why would I be annoyed if Kevin Penny manages to correct the serious flaws within his game and goes on to become a successful SL and international player? It's not like team GB has good wingers queuing up to play for it.

I agree with the assessment that Penny has gone backwards from his starting position as a speedy and dangerous broken-field runner with serious defensive weaknesses - but that's a side issue. The PROBLEM here is the legion of RL fans (of all flavour - not just Warrington) who seemingly take pride in their ignorance of the game and demonstrate it repeatedly by making outlandish predictions of greatness based on a handfull of games whilst sweeping legitimate and obvious criticisms under the carpet like stale breadcrumbs.

I lost count of the number of crackerbrained fans who advocated Penny on the wing against AUSTRALIA despite the fact that in several matches he was responsible for as many tries the opposite way as he scored. At times I wondered whether some weird kind of collective hallucination had taken hold of the site.

The truth is far too many fans just can't be bothered to appreciate anything beyond catching and running and scoring. Mysterious terms such as "defence", "workrate", "positioning" etc. are assumed to be black magic - best left well alone.

Really? We played the Kiwis the year he made his breakthrough, and by the time the World Cup came round nobody was calling for him to be in there.

Also, in that first year, he really wasn't a major liability in defence. That came later.

John Clarke would be a good example of that, slated by the majority of Wire fans for his attacking play yet his defence is probably 2nd to none at wire (yet no appreciation)

Me thinks not.

Mugwump in "I'm an arrogant ars* who knows more far about the game than all of the other idiots on here, and by the way, did I ever mention I'd been here since the beginning?" shocker!

The only epic fail around here is that smug saddo.

Strangely it came with us putting 3 brand new players alongside him on the left side, one of which has reaaaaaaaaally struggled and caused problems all round.