[b]Why is Matt King not performing like he did at Melbourne? : Tue Mar 03, 2009 10:48 am  

Just thought it worth seeing if anyone knows the reason he is not living upto our expectations?

Re: [b]Why is Matt King not performing like he did at Melbourne? : Tue Mar 03, 2009 10:51 am  

TheDoc wrote:

Just thought it worth seeing if anyone knows the reason he is not living upto our expectations?

Because he is playing mostly out of position at Warrington, he has poor players around him, he doesn't seem to like it in this country and probably isn't used to the Warrington teams way of life.

Re: [b]Why is Matt King not performing like he did at Melbourne? : Tue Mar 03, 2009 11:10 am  

Latchford Wolvesfan wrote:

Because he is playing mostly out of position at Warrington, he has poor players around him, he doesn't seem to like it in this country and probably isn't used to the Warrington teams way of life.

I reckon it could be a combination of all of these things.

Paul Cullen / James Lowes are not in the same universe, never mind the same league as Craig Bellamy.

Warrington is a good place to live, but can hardly compare to Melbourne. Can he cope with the transition from cafe culture to Bridge Street binge drinking.

Although we signed him as a centre, his best position is definately on the wing, but with the money he's on this seems a bit of a waste.

Remember this is the man that scored a hat-trick in the State of Origin decider 3 years ago, and won NSW player of the series while also earning a call up to one of the worlds great sporting sides.

Ultimately, while these changes may have taken some getting used to, at the end of the day he made the decision to come over to these shores. We the fans were under the impression that we were getting a world class three-quarter who could help us to long overdue success, yet what we have seen so far is anything but.

While King may have once been lauded as one of the worlds top backs, remember less than 6 years ago he almost quit the game after failing to earn a pro contract and worked as a binman. WBC are always on the lookout for strong, hard-working men. At the moment even they would refuse to take him on.

I have faith that with a new man in charge we could see a rejuvinated player, with the potential to become the second SL based player to earn a State of Origin call-up. But he could just as easily be back on the bins or pulling pints in the Railway.

Matt the choice is yours.

: Tue Mar 03, 2009 11:17 am  

Great post and couldn't agree more.

Re: [b]Why is Matt King not performing like he did at Melbourne? : Tue Mar 03, 2009 11:28 am  

FireWire wrote:

Warrington is a good place to live, but can hardly compare to Melbourne. Can he cope with the transition from cafe culture to Bridge Street binge drinking.

He lives in Salford Quays.

: Tue Mar 03, 2009 11:33 am  

He's not as good as we thought he was.

: Tue Mar 03, 2009 11:44 am  

Ian [77] wrote:

He's not as good as we thought he was.

Disagree with this, he was World class for Melbourne and you don't become a bad player overnight.

He's not performed as well as we thought he would have done is surely want you meant to say.

: Tue Mar 03, 2009 11:47 am  

King is a top player even though we haven't seen it. But let's be honest, if Andrew Johns can look average when he pulls on a wire shirt did we expect king to be any different?

: Tue Mar 03, 2009 12:05 pm  

Ian [77] wrote:

He's not as good as we thought he was.

Unfortunately I think thats right, because he was a Kangaroo international and played Origin I think we thought we were getting someone like Hodges, Gasnier or Inglis, and we weren't.

About this time last year I was in a bar in Pretoria, I got chatting to an Aussie bloke from Townsville and the conversation turned to league. I said I was a Warrington fan and was excited at the signings of Monaghan and King, this fella rated Monaghan but straight from the off he was negative about King. He reckoned King and Tate were weak links in the Aussie defence, both had a tendency to be caught out of position and the Kiwis had exploited this especially in 2005. He also said that where Gasnier, Inglis and Hodges were freakishly talented athletes, King was pretty much a straight up and down player with a strong physique who would run in tries on the back of a dominant Melbourne side and had got himself in the representative reckoning because of that. I argued that you don't get to play for NSW or Australia without being a good player, his response was that might be true but he was unlikely to get rep calls again so he'd cashed in on a good deal in Super League at a time when his reputation was at its peak.

I didn't think too much of this at the time because it was just the view of an Aussie fan, I think we were all excited about King coming to Wire, but with hindsight they were interesting comments.

: Tue Mar 03, 2009 12:25 pm  

We dont use him right at all. At storm he was given the ball (as a wing man where he played) about 10 metres from the line and he crashed over the winger.

At the moment we ship the ball out so slow that my gran could do a good job at a covering defence against us.