Again, Duckie, with the ridiculous boasts! How do you make out that your misfiring spine is the best in the League "by some distance"? Let look at them shall we?

For Wigan:

1) French or Ashton. Good prospect though he is I doubt anyone but a on-eyed fan would put Ashton above French at the moment.

2) Widdop/Austin or Hastings/Leuleuai. Hastings over either of yours by a substantial margin and then either of yours for the 2nd slot.

3) Clark or Powell. Clark by a distance.

I make that 2 each.

For Saints:

Coote or Ashton. Again, no disrespect to Ashton who's a fine young player but Coote easily.

Lomax/Fages or Widdop/Austin. Lomax comfortably with either of yours over Fages

Clark or Roby. Clark again but by a narrower margin. Roby up until recently.

2 each again.

I don't think there's too much that would be regarded as contentious above so where is this "by some distance" you allude to? That's, as I say, before we even get to the fact that on evidence thus far your spine doesn't seem to be working as a combination by which measure you'd be a comfortable 3rd of 3.

Our CEO will be in the concourses before the Cas game answering fans questions, say one thing about KF, he isn't frightened of putting himself in these situations when it would be easier to hide away.

Is the CEO role a true CEO role? KF, like Radlinski and Rush are running the club under the guidance of Leneghan, McAnus and Moran/Middleton. Moran, and especially Middleton will be equally involved / culpable as KF in any performance of the club I would say. A little more difficult to criticise those guys though I guess given their financial support of the club.

I like a lot of things KF has done, but his success in the role for me will be determined by the clubs actions in resolving the current run of form. He either backs the coach or sacks the coach, if he backs him his success is tied to Price's, if he sacks him, his success is tied to how the new coach performs.

I'd also like an answer to the question of who is involved with player recruitment, and how the process works at the club. Both Price and KF will be involved i'm sure, but it would be interesting to know how they are involved.

You need to swap young Ashton with Ratchford who is our starting FB. Then re-assess.

To be fair, I didn't include Ratchford as no one seems to agree on his best position, including your own coach. His best performance this season came in the halves and even Duckie would like to see him remain there. I have to say I rate Ratchford highly but you looked a better team with Ashton at fullback and Stef in the halves. If we count him as fullback, I've seen nothing from him this season to suggest he's a better option than French (the Man of Steel ratings thus far would tend to support this view) so nothing really changes for me regarding the above assessment. If you count him in the halves, again nothing changes as the two best from that list would be Hastings and Ratchford so he would only be displacing one of your own. Ditto Saints.

I'm aware that everything is subject to opinion, of course, but I've tried to look at it in an even handed manner and, agree or disagree with the assessment, I think you would agree there's nothing contentious in there? My point being, even allowing for some movement through difference of opinion, there's no way any of the 3 clubs could make the claim that their spine is better "by some distance"..

Its a difficult thing to asses and rank. My own view is that depending on how Widdop performs Warrington have the better spine, and that's more because of the collective unit, rather than individuals being compared vs other clubs.

I don't rate Powell all that highly if I'm honest, nor Leuluai (defence aside), Bevan has started well and Hastings is the best half in the comp IMO, while I think Ratchford, Austin, Widdop and Clark are all of a very high quality, with no obvious weaker player.

Similarly at Saints, Coote, Lomax & Roby are all high quality and I agree Coote and Lomax are probably ahead of their counterparts at Warrington, but Fages (again defence aside) I don't rate as highly as the other 3.

As a collective 4 I preferred the Warrington spine at the start of the year, I wouldn't go as far to say they were far better though. We need to see how Widdop turns out to see if my belief rings true.

Not an unreasonable assessment mate. As I said, opinion and club bias will play a part in it (I think the 'as a collective' part of your assessment falls down for example as I feel that is exactly what you don't have. You seem to have a collection of quality individuals rather than a collective unit). Either way I think we're both agreed that any claim that one is "by some distance" better than the others is just nonsense.

neither Widdop or Austin did a lot last night to enhance their reputations in a Warrington Shirt IMO.

They were garbage. Austin slightly less so second half but neither did anything to merit marquee status.

My concern with all the high profile playmakers, and I include Ratch, Clarke, Currie etc., is they all wait for someone else to do it. We still need someone to call the shots and direct the ship and I thought that was Widdop's remit - to date, I see no evidence.

Nor did any of the current Saints team under Cunningham (bar Mr Reliable Roby).

The Saints, Wigan and Warrington squads being compared are all capable of winning a grand final. What’s more relevant is comparing the coaches - I’m not sure where we start on that one. I like Woolf’s reputation. Lam had a good second half of last season, but the jury is still out. Price has a trophy and 3 finals but this hides the very average weekly form, and he’s yet to show he can coach a champion side.

Anyway, back to the thread and Latu - it’s clear Price isn’t fully in charge of who we sign and is under pressure to pitch the likes of Burrell in to satisfy somebody upstairs.

I was enjoying a mid-morning Port & Lemon in a town centre hostilry today and SKY seemed to be having a "lets laugh at Warrington" special.

Highlights of our GF finals v Leeds & Wigan.

I don't know what was more depressing, the knowledge that even with Briers, Monaghan x 2, Morley, Ratchford, Grix, Harrison etc. we still came up short or the knowledge that the baton has been passed to players barely worthy of comparison.

A long dark weekend of the soul beckons.

I suppose the best thing about this latu signing is that we signed him on a 2 year contract! At this rate he won't make a single appearance barring a lot of injuries.

It's not unreasonable to give Widdop the same concession / settling in period for any overseas player coming to the UK is it (given how long he's played/lived in Australia)?

If he was making mistakes then fair enough, but he just isn't getting involved at all and it's criminal for a man of his talent.

Anyway back to the topic ......
Is Ade Gardner working one-to-one with Latu to address his fitness issue whatever that might be. We can 't afford somebody just coasting around. Get him fit or get him out. If it is some injury recovery issue then just say so.

Played today in the reserves, so assuming he did a reasonable stint he can't be far off.

Given the size of the Hull team, I'd be tempted to pitch him in and see what he's got about him.

It must be difficult to be a half in this team, zero attacking structure and seemingly little game plan with the exception of an offload game and quick play the balls. (Oh, and the inside drop off to BMM).

Agree. Let's hope it's on the back of a decent run out with the reserves

According to Wires twitter, Latu and Kibula we’re bench props for the reserves today.
Doro and Louis Johnson started.
Latu got a try

It amazes me the notion of an overseas player having a settling in period as opposed to an English signing from another sl club. Australian teams come as strangers to our shores & regularly take our teams to the cleaners without a settling in period.

Is Ade working towards a skinny Latu ?

It's not really the same.
Widdop could have come over with his St George Illawarra pals and taken Wire to the cleaners.
Having to adapt to a new team, new coaching staff and different way of life is a harder challenge.

However....you see some players settle in very quickly.

Sid Domic, Darren Burns, Nat Wood (instant hit at Wakefield for the half season before he joined us).

Chris Hicks joined at the same time as Michael Monaghan and Matt King, and he settled in straight away while the other two took a season and a half to get going.

Also despite the criticism he's getting now, Blake Austin didn't take long to settle in. He was the early front runner for Man of Steel last year.

Is he any good? I know he’s not played much in the last few years but has anyone got any real insight? We might be expecting a lot more than we are going to get.

Hope not, but signs aren’t good

Well that takes us back to the competence of the Recruitment Team whoever they / he may be

Bum Bum .... nice one

Considering he reached the end of January without finding himself a club, either here or in Australia, then I'd confidently say he isn't going to be an improvement on what we already have, or what we have recently released?