Yeah, the crab was definitely one of your best wingers, as a fan of an opposing team.

Thanks for that. Although very fit and a speedster he was very lightly built and was not as strong defensively as the other right wingers of that great period viz: Keith Bowman and Stan Cowan. Ivor Watts of course ruled the roost on the left and pound for pound and inch for inch was one of the the best tackling wingers I have ever seen. Whether it was Billy Boston, Wilf Rosenburg, Lionel Cooper or Tom Van Vollenhoven little Ivor could handle them all. Brian Bevan did give him a few tricky moments though!

i'll sort out the list of nominees tomorrow, so if you think of any more candidates, get them in

Do you not think you should keep it to 6 nominees..8 is too many and would slant the voting against the less obvious choices..(fewer votes due to votes being spread over more players)
TBH it's a foregone conclusion in any case

ok we'll go with 6 and see how it goes

OK here is the list of nominees. As before i have tried to go with the flow of the thread but the list of nominees is not intended to be the final one. if you feel a player should make the list or be removed please speak up, but remember you must fight your corner and give some good reasons. i would like to make clear at this point that players are to be included on playing ability and sporting achievement only, and off field activities shouldn't come into play unless connected with issues that impinge on performance (i'm talking substance use here). i know this might be controversial and arguments and scenarios can be presented in either way, but a line in the sand needs to be drawn before we get too far into team selection. That said if there is a large majority who feel the other way (ooeer missus), i'll change it.

so without any more ado

1. Jack Harrison VC. Leaving his war heroics on one side, Harrison had a remarkable FC career. He signed from York in 1912 and went on to score 106 tries in 116 games. in 1913/14 Harrison scored 52 tries in one season, a club record which still stands. Harrison was denied further glory by his call to arms in 1916, and also international honours as the great war prevented GB going on tour to Australia

2. Bruce Ryan. The Australian was the supreme entertainer of his day, and his signing in 1947 was a huge coup for a club in somewhat of a rut at the time. Such was the interest in his signing he was met by a crowd of 4000 at Paragon station. Ryan, a champion sprinter, went on to score 60 tries in 84 games from 1947 to 1950, before going on to perform similar feats for some small club in west yorks i've forgotten the name of

3. Ivor Watts. Hailing from the Welsh valleys, Watts is second on Hull's all time try scoring list with 216 in 413 games. he had a long career running from 1945 to 1960. his last game was in the challenge cup final when Hull lost to Wakefield 5 - 38

4. Clive Sullivan MBE. FC seem to find excellent welsh wingers and Sullivan was no exception. the Cardiffian is hull's all time record try scorer with 250, scored in just 352 games. he also hold the record for tries in a game with 7. his career spanned 1961 to 1973, with a further short spell in 1982 when he played in Hull's challenge cup final replay victory over Widnes. Sullivan also played 17 times for GB winning the world cup, and 15 times for Wales. he was also the first black captain of any major British sporting team, and is one of a select number of FC players to be awarded an MBE.

5. Dane O'Hara. O'Hara was one of 3 major imports signed off the back of the 1981 kiwi tour of the UK. the right winger had a long and successful FC career winning most major trophies and scored 110 tries in 232 games. he holds the record as Hull's longest serving overseas player, representing the club from 1981 to 1990. he also won 36 New Zealand test caps scoring 15 tries.

6. Gareth Raynor. Raynor signed for Hull as something of an unknown quantity from Leeds in 2001, but soon became a favourite on the left wing. he played for the club from 2001 to 2009 broken only with a short spell in rugby union for Leicester Tigers. he scored 101 tries in 185 games winning the challenge cup in 2005, scoring a try in the final. he also won 3 caps for Great Britian, scoring the winning try in the Sydney tri nations game in 2006

so there we go. a very strong list spanning many eras of FC's history. i'll leave this thread for a few days for comments on the nominees, and then create the voting thread once the list is finalised (please also point out any errors i may have made in the brief biogs above)

Raynor?

Good winger but wouldn't even make my best team of the Superleague era. Not as good as Briscoe imo and well behind Best.

Watts in front of Francis or Stone? whilst I understand it's hard to put players in that 0% of fans have any living memory of scoring ratio is a pretty good indicator of ability. Stone particularly..he was way ahead of his contemporary's, started in the centres alternating to wing. great passer, great step, tenacious tackler and a GB winger that held the record for most tries on a tour down under for years 24 in 17 games) and had only switched codes 6 months previously. Had it not being for back problems that curtailed him to only 6 seasons and early retirement he would have surpassed Sullivan's tally imo.
For me Stone has to be in front of Watts both on all around ability, try scoring record and representative stats too.

Behind Best..oh come on..Best had some talent but was one dimensional and couldn't defend for . plenty of pace and a big lump but not a chance. id say briscoe due to his consistently poor positioning and dropsies brings him back to just a hair behind Raynor. Raynor had bags of ability, plenty in attack (not as much as Briscoe) but was much better in the air on D and his positioning as a winger far superior both in attack and defence. IMO of course.

I also think that Stone is a bad omission from this list. Granted we only have his scoring stats but another indication of a players quality are representative honours and how they compared with their contemporaries. Stone was an international and a GB tourist so even allowing for the selectors to get it wrong, some leading figures in the game must have rated him as one of the very best available. Perhaps we should expand the nomination list to 8. The problem is selecting the second winger - Clive Sullivan is miles in front of everyone else as he combines world class quality with long service to the club. Who else we pick really depends on how much emphasis you decide to give to quality of play against the length of time it was given. Is 2 years of genius better than 5 very good years or 10 above average ones?

Is someone having a laugh putting Raynor in???

Really?

No doubt someone on here will have a meltdown should Cooke or Schoey get picked.

Surely the Paul Sterling story makes him a better candidate then the one i'd like to post an insult about

Read through the thread again. the list of nominees is a summary of the main names put forward by everyone who has posted. they are not necessarily my choices. this stage of the thread is for cases to be made for players to be taken out and replaced by others but must be backed up with a decent argument, as knockersbump has done. if you want raynor taken off then make out a case for it - based entirely on playing ability and achievements

OK i have a proposal to remove Watts and replace him with Stone. i have had 2 shouts for this. alternatively i could replace Raynor with Stone.

Harrison, Ryan, Sullivan and O'Hara are all solid on the list so far. Does anyone want to keep watts or raynor on the list?

Keep them all in - 5 fullbacks in the vote, so a few more wingers, perhaps.

You raise a very interesting point and question here. May be answered sooner but will be very interesting when we reach scrum-half!

This idea is an enthralling one and well done for introducing it of course its all a matter of opinion as the term Greatest player can be interpreted differently by different people

I guess for me Stone and Watts is perhaps one for debate, I never saw Stone play but that's not the issue really, but those who saw Ivor play will I think agree that Watts and Raynor is absolutely no contest. Raynor had all the attributes needed I agree but Watts was the master of the mazy run and often his tries were not just walk in's or foot races but he would cut inside and then beat 4 or five players with steps and swerves before going over, low centre of gravity and close to the ground in a time when a lot of players ran bolt upright! However of course it's all subjective really !

And it's whether you personally enjoyed watching these players. Sometimes the technically best player isn't necessarily the one you remember. I'd probably have Colin Best in there just because of his flair. I just enjoyed watching the game more when he was playing.
Mick Crane is my hero but could you have him in in front of Knocker? If the winger debate is interesting the loose forward one will be something else!

the LF and scrum half debates are the ones i'm looking forward to, but theres great debate in all the positions

The issue I have with Watts in the final list is that firstly he isn't international level amongst his peers, he also was in a side that were at the very top for quite a few years yet he couldn't bag any rep honours (Cumberland aside).
That's a sentimental viewpoint.
I'm sure he did mazy runs, all wingers do, then again memory usually leaves us with the great stuff and not the mundane. Sorry but Watts scoring record isn't good enough in what was a top team for quite a few years he was in it and he also wasn't good enough for full international rep..he should be dropped from the final list.

There was a bit of competition for international wingers when Watts was playing.
It used to be GB rather than England in those days, and Billy Boston springs to mind. More may follow.....

As the game has changed so much you can really only measure players against their contemporaries. Now the 50s may have been a golden age for wingers, or then again it may not. I wasn't born then. I have heard that Boston, Mick Sullivan and others were legends of the game, but was that because they were so much better than everyone else before or since, or conversely that the others were rather poorer than different eras? In the distant future I expect that Ryan Hall (given the international and finals record he has already accumulated) will be spoken of in highly complimentary terms and people will be saying Briscoe for example, had to compete for a spot with him!

I know that some international and other representative selections have been (in)famously strange at times but on the whole it is a useful, mostly independent, way of rating a player's ability and as such it needs serious consideration when considering our selections for Hull's best.

J Harrison is or was Hull leading try scorer of all times

In a season!

The 50's was a golden period for class wingers and for Great Britain/ England in Ashes matches. As well as Boston and Mick Sullivan, there was Frank Castle, Terry O'Grady and Ike Southward a fellow Cumbrian to Ivor. Also Lewis Jones played on the wing in some matches. International wingers also playing in England at that time included Bruce Ryan, Wilf Rosenburg, Brian Bevan, Tom Van Vollenhoven and Lionel Cooper. The latter 3 in particular were legends of the game.

As a side issue when Billy Batten played in his 10 matches for England in Ashes matches he played on the wing in all matches but 1. The one was played at the Boulevard where he played centre and his winger was Bill Stone. England lost in that game.

ok i'm going to bring in billy stone into the nominations and drop gareth raynor. this leaves the nominations as

jack harrison
bruce ryan
billy stone
clive sullivan
ivor watts
dane o'hara

anyone want to change this before the vote is created?