Quote ="SEB"Absolutely. We learnt our lesson after announcing Neil Kelly was going to join us as coach and then didn't and I think there were a couple of overseas players being talked about (not big names) that didn't come in the end either. I remember Paul Cullen emphasising the importance of not talking about signings until they were 100% and I don't think we've done it since. We certainly never claimed Matt Orford was on his way. Whearas Salford have been doing this for years - Steve Simms was particularly guilty of doing it.'"
Cullen was obsessive about details of targets not being leaked either because he didn't want to alert other clubs or because he didn't want the club to have egg on its face if it didn't materialise. It's not always possible because often stuff gets put in the public domain by agents who want to bid up their player's value: the Myler deal for instance was well known about. I expect Elliot Whitehead has a very proactive agent, but I do think Koukash is a bit naive. Both agents and press have a vested interest in getting owners or coaches to comment, at the moment both groups are taking advantage of Koukash.
You can't always keep offers secret but Warrington have done better than most at keeping some deals under wraps. With Vinnie Anderson, the story in the papers was about a race between Bradford and London to sign him, and then suddenly Warrington announced the deal. Matt King caught the press on the hop too. The big Aussie signings mooted in summer 2007 were Michael Monaghan being chased by us and Hull, and Matt King being chased by Wigan and Leeds. I don't think many had Warrington down for landing both.
And of course the biggest secret operation in transfer history: Andrew Johns.
There were a few others that didn't materialise: if I remember we tried to go for Brent Kite and Sean O'Loughlin around the time we got Gleeson and Fa'afili, but those didn't make the papers. Also seem to remember we were in for Francis Meli too. I think his agent revealed that one to the papers.
And another good one, remember that off season when Nat Wood was supposed to be joining Wigan, I remember hearing (from a pretty reliable source) that we were trying to clear a quota spot to sign Brad Fittler, he had just retired from the Roosters and we wanted him to do a season with us. The story I heard was that Fittler came back saying he didn't think he could do himself justice and didn't want to finish his career just taking the money and not being up to it, which was fair play to him. Never knew whether that was all true but I liked the story and it was at a time when we were very active for the big names.
I did enjoy the time when Cullen issued a statement saying we were not signing Adrian Morley, and he simply would not allow our fans and sponsors to be misled in this way...sure we weren't.
Quote ="SEB"
Once we started improving our squad, it was steady, sustained year on year improvement. Whatever people think of Cull as a coach, its hard to criticise his signings. Virtually every single one contributed to improving us and very, very few if any were a complete failure. The squads that won the 2009 and 2010 cups were pretty much what he had built.'"
I don't agree with this bit. Cullen signed a lot of players that were past their best and did not have the same impact for us that they did other clubs: Cardiss, Swann, Kohe-Love, Reardon, Vinnie Anderson.
The likes of Rauhihi and Bracek would go in the category of OK but not quite what we were expecting. The one that was a really failed signing was Michael Sullivan.
And other players that started well but then faded: Grose, Lima, Parker. Arguably Martin Gleeson could go in that category too: although I was always a big fan, after his first couple of seasons his best performances were for GB/England and the occasional good one for us and he was treading water a lot of the time.
I also think it was a mistake to have released John Wilshere so soon as he went on to be a decent player with Salford and Leigh and would have been better than Richie Barnett.
Cullen's good signings come in two categories: the ones that were good even when Cullen was here: Morley, Gleeson, Hicks, Forshaw, Fa'afili, Leikvoll, and the ones that didn't do much when he was here but came good after Cullen had gone: Bridge, Monaghan, King, Louis Anderson, Johnson, Grix (in the case of the last two, they were injured a lot while he was here).
