Make your mind up




He was imo exceptional as our main attacking weapon.

Does the one dimensional game plan mean Cooke was a lesser player then? The arguement that all attack went through him so he wasnt that good really doesnt hold water for mine.

Assists are defined by SL as you have said, the final player to touch the ball before the scorer, be it the kicker or passer of the ball.

My mind is made up, always has been. As any half back would be, cooke was important to Hull. He was a decent enough player, never anywhere near international quality and was the only creative player we really had in 2005 and 2006. The coaches therefore built the gameplan around him and therefore we struggled when he left. We then replaced him with 2 superior players in Matt Head and Adam Dykes who both proved when fit that paul cooke was never this irreplaceable player some seem to believe he was.

Yes cooke leaving hurt us but not as much as the poor recruitment of a replacement since and the abysmal performance of our current coach. Remains to be seen if we can get sean long on the field enough to actually banish this myth that cooke was some god like creation who's leaving has doomed Hull FC to the lower reaches of superleague forever.

And if he was so exceptional perhaps you can point me in the direction of the GB caps he won whilst at Hull

You misunderstand me if you think I am saying Paul Cooke wasnt a good player. It was a team limitation at the time and an area we needed to improve with our without Cooke.

I did misunderstand you, mainly as you were agreeing with JTP who was finding any reason he could to play down Cooke as an exceptional player when he was at FC. FWIW Yeamo and Raynor would have struggled to get in the GB team if it wasnt for the service they received from Cooke.

We did need to change our game plan to have more dimensions i agree. We've not managed since Cooke has left though imo.

Your bang on the money he was.
But because he left Hull for Rovers people will argue against it just for the sake of it.

Yeaman never played for GB under Kear. His 2 caps were on the tour at the end of the 2006 season, long after Swain & co had got Kear the sack.

Around the same amount Briers has won whilst being Warrington's exceptional player for the last decade.

I agree with you Dave about the importance of Cooke and his influence as Hulls main go to man, I would say he should have played for GB in 2006 but the bigger picture tells me that by that time we became too reliant on one player and that style of play. We had better attacking options in 2004 when Smith, Cooke and to some extent Lupton played together (scoring over 70 points twice in a game that year). We were on the verge of big things but did not develop in the right areas over the next couple of seasons.

Hindsight is a great thing.

Rovers fans overstate his importance and Jake underplayed it. Truth is probably some where in between I would say.

briers is the epitome of inconsistency. Brilliant one match, dire for teh next 6. He has improved it a bit under smith but still far from the likes of sean long for the last 10 years.

cooke may have been this "exceptional" player in a Hull side with little creativity but in comparison to other half backs in the NRL and SL he was average.

He's now below average BTW

I'm not understating his improtance to Hull. he was our main pivot, of course he was important. What I'm saying is that in SL and NRL terms he was/is easily replaceable. It's been the failing of successive coaches and the board which have meant we haven't done it effectively.

Thats what I mean when saying in 2004 we were on the verge of going to the next level consistantly and never.

Cooke became so important because we never gave him a supporting act in the attacking department. That may have been Brough in different circumstances.

Ok but just to clarify cos i think we're going round in circles here, Jake started by saying Cooke wasnt even an average player, we've since all agreed that actually he was a very good player for FC (exceptional imo) although as our only pivot we were one dimensional as a team and we've not replaced him. There's a consensus that as a player he is replaceable but we've just not managed to do it, i'd agree with that. All of the points above about been replaceable dont remove the fact though that for a 7 or 8 year period he was a top notch performer for us and was one of the main driving forces behind our success of the time.

Sorry Dave I jumped into the thread and was never replying to Jake saying Cooke wasnt even average!



My point is that although Cooke was a top player for Hull and became so important as our ONLY pivot we did have better options pre 2005 and should have developed the team differently from then.

Hope that clears up my angle anyhow....

Also I am not sure how many people belive Cooke was a 'top' performer for 7 or 8 years for Hull. I know certain Rovers fans who insisted he was garbage right up until 2004!

That is not my opinion BTW...

No doubt the same ones that held the view that Briscoe wasn't fit to lace cockaynes boots.

He wasn't at the time

Careful - we wouldn't want this thread drifting into a discussion of things relevant to Hull KR.



The most telling stat of Cooke's importance to Hull FC IMO, would be the proportion of Hull posters on this thread talking about him nigh on 3 years after he left the KC. And the thread on the Hull board for those who have really, [ireally[/i moved on - so much so that they'd boycott the club if his ever-imminent return happened.

19 pages and he 's still with us tch!

Thats the way the cookie crumbles.

I would agree with all of that. It was criminal the way Hull didnt kick on from the foundations they developed in 2004/05. I thought they were well placed to start a period of domination but fortunately it wasnt to be!
Could it have been different if Danny Brough had been given more responsibility, thus taking a bit of pressure off Cooke and making Hull a bit more unpredictable in attack?

Unfortunately Brough simply wasn't ready at the time. It's easy to look at him today and wonder why he didn't make more impact during his time at FC, but the simple truth is that he was nothing like the player then that he is now - and he had fitness and attitude problems as well.

The bigger problem was that following our injury-hit end to the 2004 season the incoming John Kear decided to spread the wages bill more thinly among a larger group of players. This started the whole slide into a team full of mediocre players that is only now beginning to be addressed. Cooke became our only playmaker when in 2004 we had players across the park who could be creative and play football.

only for another 9 months max