Interesting signing.
Will we get a current SOO standard player - no
Will we get a players that is SL standard - yes (most likely)
Will we pay SOO standard money for a one year deal - no
Will we have a player with a big question mark over his fitness - yes
Will we have a player that will help with selling season tickets and sponsorship - yes
Will we have a player that will fill a position that were in need of - no (unless someone is leaving that causes a deficiency somewhere).

Then there's the $64k question of can we get the best out of him, and can he help to get the best out of us?
This is the biggest concern given SP's boring brand of rugby on the whole, and comes down to whether SP is able to make us a more free flowing, ball promoting and expansive rugby team.

The underbelly of Warrington is rife with late night confectioneries.

We are in need of centres - the current centre roster is the weakest its been since about 2002.

If we go from:
King
Gelling
Brand

to
Inglis
King
(maybe Gelling)
Brand

it is a major upgrade

If that's the case, I'm surprised that I haven't seen Karl Fitzpatrick on my doorstep with a contract in his hand.

If a backs roster containing Ratchford, Charnley, Lineham, Austin and Widdop can’t play an entertaining brand under Steve Price, Greg Inglis won’t make a jot of difference.

However, UK rugby league is on its knees right now and I’ll live in hope that we get to see at least a few glimpses of the talent that GI is.

Is this really the only thing you, as a Wire fan, could find to say about this signing?

True but what role for Burrell? (Or is he a total red herring)
Ratch can also play there.
Don't think we're too badly off for centres.

Props.....
Now that's another story.
I wonder if Latu will ever get fit ?

I’m actually very happy with our backs for this and next season.

FB: Ratchford, Ashton, Thewlis, Mamo
Wing: Charnley, Lineham, Ashton, Mamo, Thewlis
Centre: GI, King, Gelling(?), Brand, Burrell, Mamo
Halves: Austin, Widdop, Ratchford, GI, Riley Dean

Obviously, there are question marks over Gelling as to whether we may of seen the last of him due to his off field discipline. And you could suggest Mamo may be released to make space for the overseas quota for GI. My only worry for is our 4th choice prop, we still lack another prop and have done so for the last 3 years now. Hill and Cooper are entering the twilight of their careers it would be best to recruit in this position ASAP. As we know, we don’t get enough minutes out of Sita and Latu couldn’t seem to of stayed away from the fast food joints during the pre-season.

The next area we need to strengthen after that would be in second row, BBM will be a massive loss. You could argue he’s been our best forward the last twelves months or since he regained his fitness and has been a wrecking ball at times. There are still plenty of questions surrounding Currie and Livett regarding their contract status, there’s obviously been little murmurs about on going discussions. But nothing official has come out as of yet, it would be very disappointing to lose them both including BBM. I would be happy if we signed McMeeken as is he off contract as well but it’s all pure speculation at this stage.

You are right the prop issue is now the main area of concern, I had actually forgotten we had signed Latu. I think you are being way too generous with regard to BMM though. Certainly he has stepped up this season, but his effectiveness has been sporadic to say the least since he signed (I realise that is injury related but that doesn’t detract from my point).

I think he’s had a great start to this season, and had some flashes mid way through last year (when he regained his full fitness). He’s become a real weapon of our attack and scored a fair few tries to show, out of BBM/Currie/Hughes the second row I’d least want to lose would be BBM at the moment. 2018 I will admit he was unfit and struggled for form at times, March/April 2019 he really stepped up his game for me.

Prop is a position that we find hard to fill .Philbin gives everything when he comes on but we need another sub to give our ever present Hill & Cooper a rest. Perhaps even Hughes could step up to prop & become the new versatile ,slot-in-anywhere Ben Westwood.

I watched the Wigan v Leeds Magic game on Saturday & was amazed at the effort Crosby was putting in compared to when he signed for us. I know he had personal tragedy problems but we should have expected to at least see a glimmer of him at his best.

Perhaps our strategy for the future is to bamboozle opponents with electrifying back line play & go round defences instead of trying to punch a hole through the middle. That would be awesome.

I think Crosby is done, he's turned out for Leeds for about 50 minutes since joining them 18 months ago.

It's a shame what's happened to him since he left Wigan.

Re latu, I was reading another article on the warriors talking about loan players, and thought we could send him there to get fit.

It really is poor if professional sportsmen can't even keep themselves fit enough to do what is a job. A club should really only expect to be doing the minimum tweaking of fitness levels for a sports professional.

It's a massive red flag for me when you get players like that.

If they can't keep themselves fit their attitude in other areas is going to be bad too.

Remember when Appo joined from the French league. Plange signed him but then he said he couldn't pick him because he wasn't up to fitness required. By the time he was fit Plange had been sacked and it was Cullen who got to use him. That little episode was a preview of what Appo would be like later on.

Whenever you hear a coach making comments about a player that suggest he's not fit enough (and its not related to injury) the alarm bells go off. You know if a coach is throwing that out about a player in public he's seriously fed up. Also you know his teammates will think he's a waste of space.

No. You’re taking it out of context.

I’m replying to the posts about how about how much of a difference he can make if we’re playing ‘5 drives and a kick’.

Imagine how good he could be on the back of Austin, Widdop and Ratchford playing off the cuff.

Latu is a complete mystery to me. I know we need support in the Prop department but what analysis was done prior to his signing. Was he either recovering from injury or had just not played because he was down the oecking order at his previous club? To see him feature as little as he has is worrying. Other than Price stating that he was not ready having, one might assume, been on some kind of intensive fitness programme does raise cause for concern especially when when have another prop (Sita) who for whatever reason doesn't do big minutes at all. Is Latu here just for 2020 ? He may well undercut the unfortunate Dallas Mead's appearance record at this rate.

We signed him on a 2 year contract so he's here next year aswell. He's had no injury worries, he's just not got picked because he's been crap. All hype and full of potential but he's never hit it. He was a panic signing as we couldn't sign anyone else, we got knocked back by 3 props and he was pretty much the only prop available.
Wasn't impressed at all when we announced his signing as he was the very bottom of the list of players we were linked too.
You never know though Greg Inglis could be the type of player Latu will look at and learn from with proffessionalism etc and may kick him up the butt and finally gett his in gear.......but i very much doubt it.

At 28, cant see Latu wanting to be picking up stuff off IG to enhance his career or positivity. He he doesn’t/hasn’t a want to know now, he’ll never will.
He’s been selected in a playing squad with getting some time on a field 9 times in 3 years. I think that speaks volumes.

Looks like we've been shafted there out of desperation because there is a shortage of decent props. Leeds signing Crosby on a 3 year deal was a signal of that.

I wonder why there's a shortage of good props coming through junior systems. We've been hearing for years that youth coaches ignore ball playing talent because they are obsessed with size and athleticism, you'd have thought if that were the case at least we'd be churning out some Stuart Fielden-style battering ram props.

I would love to have Paul Wood and Carvell back in this current side.

That's a very good point Sally, and yeah throw Paul Wood and Carvell on our bench and we'd be looking VERY threatening

And oh for a pack from Morley, Monaghan, Carvell, Harrison, L.Anderson, Westwood, Hill, Clark, Cooper.

How did we fail?

We didn't really fail. We came up against a great Leeds team still in its era of long dominance, played them in 3 finals and won 2, lost 1. In 2013 we had bad luck in a final when we lost 2 key players to injury and had to totally reorganise the back line. If Ratchford and Monaghan hadn't got injured, its pretty likely we'd have won that game and the whole way that era was viewed would be very different. The team was good enough and well coached enough to win a Grand Final it just had freak bad luck on the day.

If that team from 2009 to 2013 had come round 5-10 years later, it would have cashed in on the lack of other good teams, could well have seen 3 or 4 Grand Final wins. Imagine adding Inglis to them.

Thanks Sally, I’m aware of all those factors, but that pack!

I think that Paul Wood is missing from that formidable pack selection!