I don't know.
Put him outside a centre with a timed pass...things might have kicked on from his entry in the Dream Team.

I think what really did for Penny was that
a) he lost form at a bad time
b) we made new signings that squeezed him out
c) he got injuries that took the edge off his pace

The off season after Penny's breakthrough year, we signed Hicks, and the following season Riley had his own breakthrough year. Most of that season, Penny and Riley were the wingers with Hicks at fullback, but Riley outperformed Penny. The next year, Penny started badly, and got dropped and Matt King moved to the wing for a while. Tony Smith came in with Penny already out of the side, King's form started to improve rapidly after a disappointing first season (later to settle back in at centre), and then we signed Mathers. Penny was out of the side, watching us now winning games and transformed as a team, there was no way back in to dislodge a back three of Mathers, Riley and Hicks who were all fit and in form.

People criticised Smith for letting Penny go out on loan but when you're winning games and players are performing well, there's no rationale for dropping them. Letting him out on loan was a sensible choice rather than letting him waste in the reserves, but he didn't do much in his loan spells, which contrasted to when the same happened to Riley who went away and did well and earned his way back in to the team.

Also Penny seemed to have injuries and lose pace at this point. All those Offiah pace comparisons apply to Penny's first couple of seasons but after that he was reasonably quick but not in the extreme shock pace category any more.

After all that, Penny deserves a lot of respect because very few players climb back to SL after dropping down the divisions but he did and re-established himself as an SL standard player. He ended up playing past the time Riley had been finished as an SL player. As easyWire says, he had improved his all round game when he came back second time he just didn't have the same edge of pace. Reminded me of Toa's second spell. But also watching him second time round, I never thought he was the best winger at the club and I never thought he would have got in the team had Hicks still been there.

Yup he had pace early on but once that started to fade and we made a few signings then he was always going to struggle to get back

I would suggest that smith never brought him back and that is the primary reason he was not called upon.

We can look back at many players maybe if we had andrew johns coaching the halves Jamie' durban or gay hulse would have been regular internationals or if had the specialist winger coach then richard varkulis would hold the record for most tryst scored in a game.

We can nevee know what may have happened had he improved upon the potential he had initially shown but I've heard some bonkers reasoning for it as far fetched as a bit of grief from some saints fans as a reason why he didn't

I still maintain that Penny with his game knowledge and speed could have secured a regular place at Superleague level on the wing ... with a flag in his hand.

Anyone who says penny couldn't catch needs to think about what they are saying. Bar Joel, he was the best under a high ball we have had in the smith era and if he had played at wembley in 2016 we would have won, seeing as Hull's tactics in both their final wins was a last tackle bomb to the corner. Unfortunately we had a five foot six midget who is inept under a high ball on our wing.

Did you not forget that Russell did score at Wembley

Chris Riley did OK with the same centre

We wanted penny to do well the speed he had was exciting and he shown potential to be a very good winger. He could catch a ball most rugby players can its a consistency thing. Wings a cruel position to play and you can either look like a great or a fool.

Russel lacks confidance issue going back to the bad facial injury he had not ability if he can regain that formula will be a different player completely but I feel that until we replace russel with a try scorer and atkins with a try creatorwe will fall short of gf success.

He did but that was also a period when we would do more attacking than defending.

Once you start getting in to making excuses for Penny it undermines the argument that he was an Offiah-style talent that could create something out of nothing.

We have all these if onlys...

- if only he hadn't been dropped when he was out of form, because being dropped affected his confidence
- if only he'd played outside a better centre than Matt King
- if only he'd played for top teams rather than being shipped on loan to Harlequins/Widnes and Wakefield

....he would have been an elite winger

Yes maybe he would have scored a lot of tries with all that help but that wouldn't have marked him out as a special elite player. Why did nobody else pick him up? Leeds...Wigan...NRL clubs, these teams have all the things in place to make the best out of young talent - if he was a once in a generation kind of player like people claim, why did they not pick up up for relatively nothing and take a shot on him?

I don't want to be knocking him/arguing against him because I liked him, I was happy when we brought him back and as with all our academy products I wanted him to be successful but I think we have to be realistic - he was a decent player who worked hard to fight back to have a top flight career but the mythology around him is a bit embarassing.

Wainwright got the mythology too. To some he was "hands of e" to others he was the next Harry Pinner.

So as you say "Put him outside a centre with a timed pass". So the centre was not at fault as Riley scored all those tries.
Out of interest who was the centre that didn't have the timed pass.

Not at all, I'm simply pointing out all things are relative. We were doing more attacking across the whole team.

Not mythology on my part. He scored exceptional tries at the start of his career (far more than the fondly remembered Henare). I just feel that had he been given support at that point he COULD have gone on to bigger and better things. Not guaranteed, simply a "what if"...like many things in sport.

Considering the love-in with Regan Grace by the RL media, you wonder should Penny have received the same encouragement he would have developed better. Imagine if he broke through at Wigan, Saints or Leeds instead of a Paul Cullen coached mid-table team.

Penny arguably had twice the skill of Grace (who is not half a bad player) at the same age but we just love to make someone the scapegoat (even though that 2007/2008 team was awful defensively across the park). I’ve watched Grace make more howlers than he has made/scored tries but I bet we won’t see the same vitriol.

Don't think that's anything to do with media, the media liked Penny so much they named him in the SL dream team.

Grace is rightfully getting some plaudits (as did Penny at the same stage). It will be interesting to see how Grace develops in seasons 2 and 3 as that was where Penny started to decline, whether that was because of his ability or support.

We don’t only need some speedsters out wide, we need some pace in the pack.

All of our props are slow. You never see any of them receive the ball from a quick PTB and sprint into a disorganised defence, causing problems. They all just seem to be joggers who jog into tackles, other than Hill, who does have good footwork and does make extra yards in the hit-up as a result but never hits the line at good pace.

If Penny had come through in those teams the expectations would have been even higher. Remember at Leeds Leroy Rivett and Marcus St Hilaire were fast and highly rated when they first came through, but when they proved to be unreliable they were moved on.

If Penny had come through at Leeds, it would have been at the same time as Ryan Hall, and they had Scott Donald on the other wing. If Penny had some bad games, he would have found it harder to get back in their side than he did to get past Hicks and Riley.

I think we need to get the quality of our wingers in perspective. Greg Eden scored 38 tries this season.
How many would Lineham, Russell and Penny have scored playing on the left wing at Castleford?
How many would Eden have scored for Wire this season? I've no idea of course but I'd guess our lads would have bagged a few.

Don't know what the mythology around Penny is. .....
All I know is he was the most exciting winger ive seen at the club.

Also at no other time in the near forty years of watching wire have saints fans aimed a chant at other wire wingers.......they never sang theres only one mark forster or one Manoa Thompson when they put 80 nil on us. ...

They did it because penny scored a couple of worldys against them and then knocked on on his own try line gifting them a score.... so they let him have it ...he then left Meli for dead in a league game and then when tries were scored on his wing they continued the one Kevin penny chant.


You don't sing at bog standard rubbish players......
Or for that matter even players you think are better. ....I can't imagine " there's only one Marcus St hilaire" caught on.

Anyway he's gone. ...We should move on... Russell and Lineham will be our wingers next season. ...surely we should be excited that two defensively excellent and pacey wingers are on our wings. ?

Penny was certainly fast and scored some electric tries, but when he fell out of favour he was sent out to first Widnes, and then London. Presumably for a bit of breathing space. Several clubs could have come in for him at that point, and eventually Wakefield took him for a season in 2011. After that though he drifted down a division to lowly Swinton for two years. If we are going to argue that he was a top class winger and that we missed out, then you would have to ask why other SL clubs also spurned the opportunity during those 3-4 years when he was available.

Back to our wingers for 2018 and I would certainly hope that we will not have Russell on the wing. With an improved pack and the comment when Sims departed that "we were going to go in a different direction", I would hope we are finally going to see the pack responsible for getting us back up field rather than, Russels' scooting. (Nothing wrong with a good scoot now and again btw, just so long as it's not our prime weapon). If that is the case, Russel would be redundant as far as I am concerned. I don't know how fast Sitaleki Akauola is, but perhaps he could play for us on the wing ? He certainly looked impressive taking a try on his video clip and I would imagine his defending will be typically Tongan, with his opposite number getting thrown into the front row of the stands rather than simply tackled around the legs. Either way, we desperately need a quality winger from somewhere.

Defensively excellent? Is that tongue in cheek?

With each new addition I convince myself further, what were we thinkin about keeping TS so long?
I'm even beginning to think that following 2011 peak of much of Cullen's team that he is simply another Millward.

It's like TS had no idea of menace, of balance, of player worth, team success over play development and being in touch with fans.

I have a sence of feeling that 2018 could show us that TS was one of the worst coaches we have ever had... I selfishly hope so!

Tony Smith is/was a great coach, no doubting that. He took a collection of quality individuals and turned them into a trophy-winning team.

The problem is, like almost every coach's era, it has to come to an end. Things became stale, the recruitment wasn't necessarily that great, and the mental monkey of not being able to make that last hurdle of the GF would be hanging over us. Things had to change and they have. Smith brought us one of the greatest Warrington eras, but that doesn't mean he could continue to do so...

Price may or may not achieve a trophy win with Warrington but it doesn't change the fact we needed a fresh start.

That's for Sally to decide...