Sorry I'm not having that, that's not a slight on Swain or doubting the influence Swain had on Cooke, but our downfalls biggest factor was losing Cooke. It's all opinion but I think it's safe to say lack of creativity, someone who can find a pass to convert possession into going over the line is what Hull have missed the most.

Stats don't tell the full story by any means, but if you class 04, 05 and 06 as our best period of the past decade as I would, Cookes assist stats are:

04-21
05-29
06-24

Like I say don't tell the full story, but then again think of the number of try's set up by Cooke on that left hand side that he didn't directly assist, and what offered with his kicking game his influence was huge.

The closest any other Hull player to this in terms of assists was Dykes in 2008 with 13 I believe, when you consider this and our general lack of creatively and ability to score try's since Cooke left, it's hard in my opinion to say that any single factor contributed more to our downfall then losing Cooke's creativity (and more importantly not replacing him), however good a player Swain was, which is not in question, he was a beast.

I feel the same. Whilst I think houghton has some great qualities, he isn;t a top class hooker but, as you say, he's untouchable

In this thread I was one of the 1St to criticise Danny
Feel it's gone to far the other way now. He has limitations but each season he seems to improve slightly in the areas he needs to. When the rest of the team is so disjointed and out of sync attack wise it's sometimes made him look worse.
We need to play to his strengths which for me would mean him coming off the bench and bringing his energy and running game after Aaron has hopefully got some momentum into our forwards.
Danny went away from his running game to much last year and spent to much time trying to be a pivot!

And massively in agreement about Berringan, criminal how he was wasted here.

It is about balance there's no doubt. I have no criticism of Houghton because he does everything to the absolute best of his ability. What's frustrating is hearing all of the praise above and beyond those qualities he has and the mythology that's created. As you say he has his limitations , there has been some improvement in some areas but he's not suddenly going to become Cam Smith or anywhere near and I worry that as long as he's here we're never going to consider having a better player in his position. In my opinion because that role is so vital to the way a team plays that's a handicap that we're having to work around all of the time and it's especially difficult to do that with the pivots we've had , or haven't had , recently.

I think that works both ways - is he really so bad? Too many opinions become facts.

Houghton is very good imo he is in a position what is involved in a lot of the game possibly the most important on the pitch, its one what needs good players around him to compliment his work like cam smith,cronk,slater.