Biggest signing busts of the decade...10. Joe WestermanThere were spells when Westerman looked like he was going to be a good player but overall I thought he underperformed. We paid a big transfer fee for him and he had a big reputation although when we signed him there was a sense that he was a player who hadn't lived up to the potential he showed when he first broke through at Cas and he wasn't a super driven and dedicated professional. He never changed those perceptions. I get the feeling that Westerman wouldn't have lasted long in an environment like Leeds, Wigan or Saints but he had enough talent that clubs the next tier down like us and Hull indulged him as a talent and big name.
9. Kevin BrownThere has been a reevaluation of Brown on here this season, as his absence hurt us. I was a lot higher on Brown than most when we signed him, I thought there was prejudice against him because of the teams he'd played for before but I always thought he was a good player and he carried Widnes during his time there. With us he had a couple of games where he looked really good but generally didn't live up to his past performances. But he seems to have been universally well regarded by teammates and coaches, including Wayne Bennett who had him in the England team in the World Cup, and he was a tough player who had bad luck with injuries particularly concussions, so I find it hard to be critical. I think this was a signing that really hurt TS, after losing both finals in 2016 we really needed something that would help take us to a higher level. Sandow walked out on us and we picked up Brown and he didn't provide us with the same kind of threat. We transformed in to a more predictable and pedestrian side and the fans seemed to really lay in to Brown and TS that year.
8. Anthony EnglandPossibly expectations about England were unfairly high because we had struck gold with Chris Hill and because England just 'looked' like he was going to be good. I know all SL forwards are big guys, but he had the hulking, confident physique of someone who looked like he was going to impose himself. He already had a long career behind him in the lower divisions and I think he was 28 in his first season with us, so it was different from signing a young prospect. Overall I felt he hovered just below the threshold of SL standard for most of his time with us, and looked more suited to the Championship. But he went on to play for Wakefield and seemed to do ok so fair play to him.
7. Jason ClarkClark hasn't been
bad, he just gets on this list because he's underwhelmed compared to what we expected. He had glowing tributes from South Sydney and the reports from the NRL were that he was a workhorse, ultimate professional, heart of a team etc. That type of signing, like Darren Burns, Sid Domic, tends to be low risk, they are the ones who usually do very well and become popular on the terraces. But Clark hasn't seemed like he was close to say the performance level of Ben Harrison. He's been 'just a guy' so far.
6. Gary WheelerUtility back with a bad run of injuries early in his career? Given what happened with Simon Grix, I was willing to give Wheeler a chance but I think we always knew this was going to be a gamble of a signing. It didn't pay off. I had forgotten about him but it seems like he's going to be back in SL next year with Toronto so we'll see if we missed anything.
5. Ryan BaileyIf you had said to me that we were going to sign one of the Leeds golden generation I would have said I'll be delighted with everyone of them
apart from one. Bailey always seemed like the odd one out from that group in terms of his attitude. He came across as surly, arrogant and fancied himself as a bit of a hardman, and in his Leeds days I always felt he was a level lower in talent than those others too. He never seemed more than a numbers-filler with us, and I never liked seeing him in our team.
4. Matty RussellThis threw sand in the theory that Wigan give their young players more chances to develop than we do. From my memory it was seen as a surprise that Wigan cut him so early and people were saying it could be a Shaun Briscoe situation where he came back to make them regret it. He looked like he had potential, good footwork, fast and brave. We gave him chance after chance after chance to develop with more time in the first team and he never seemed to improve much. He was good at what he was good at - running the ball out of dummy half early in the tackle count and making some yards to take the pressure off the forwards. But he never offered much else. He reminded me of Dean Gaskell a decade earlier. After Price came in he was shifted out pretty quickly.
3. Mitchell DoddsFeels harsh to put him this highly on the bust list as it wasn't his fault. Seemed like an impressive signing when we got him, as he had a good reputation at Brisbane Broncos but suffered an awful broken leg at the start of his career here and that ended his career as a first teamer in the top level of professional RL. I don't think he played an NRL first team game again after he returned home. A sad situation for us and for him.
2. Tyrone RobertsWith hindsight this was a massively overhyped signing considering his NRL pedigree. He'd been halfback of two struggling teams and never made a major impact in the NRL. He had a good highlight reel montage which showed a few tricks, which probably generated the hype. People were touting him as a 'Man of Steel contender' when we signed him. I was down in Aus that off season for the Ashes and World Cup and the Aussie fans who I chatted to were surprised that he was considered a significant signing, their verdict was he was a so-so player who had never come close to being in the top tier over there. He probably had one significant game for us - the CC quarter final when we beat Wigan 23-0. Other than that, he maybe wasn't as bad as some made out, he wasn't prone to making lots of errors, he just shifted the ball about from side to side and never really showed any gamebreaking threat.
1. Roy AsotasiI had a bad feeling about this signing when he was supposed to be Samoa captain for the 2013 world cup and did a no-show for training camp. This was a classic example of signing a player based on his form of a few years earlier and missing signs that he was on a steep decline. He'd been one of the drivers of Souths revival and he'd been consistently one of the top 3 or so props in the NRL. We signed him to replace Morley who we had allowed to go to Salford after seeing that Morley wasn't the same player in his last season, and we were right judging by his Salford form. But we'd missed exactly the same thing happening with Asotasi hence Souths being willing to ship him on to us. And whereas Morley at least kept running it in as hard as he could for a couple of years with his home town club, Asotasi was expensive passenger and gave off the impression that he was going through the motions in his Wire career.
