When it comes to Ruck, don't encourage them. Ignore them and hopefully they'll go away.
I read it. To be fair, they weren’t a million miles off on some of them. A bit of recency bias though.
Amazing Travis Ismaiel didn’t make the list.
They also have no idea how much we spent on them. It's basically an article that says we signed some end-of-career players who played like guys at the end of their career, plus a couple of poor performers and one massive injury problem.
Woo.
Any article worth its salt about Quins' failed signings would have included Cronje, Henjak, Luscombe, James and Barry, among many others. The recent ones feel like relatively small fry really!
Those players certainly didn't have the impact we might have hoped - though Ashton might have come to rue leaving in January given how the season turned out.
Some of the others range from harsh to downright objectionable, though. Catrakilis is the most egregious - calling a guy who got a freak life threatening injury in his first match a "waste" shows a complete lack of empathy or even understanding of what rugby is. And if that injury had not happened, we might not have seen Smith develop as fast as he did. It's not what I'd wish on any one, but the Cat's sick pay is a very fair price for what Quins ultimately got.
PDJ never performed to the level we might have expected but it's at least partially excused by what he was going through off the pitch.
IIRC, the coaches spoke pretty positively about Sackey - he was hired to do a pretty specific job covering some long term injuries, and did the job. I'm not sure if Goneva was in the same category, but he's the one I'd call out most as a bad buy.
Dr. Roberts not mentioned but the Cat is? Bizarre.
I watched the good Dr play super rugby the other day. He threw an intercept for a try and got a yellow card. Those are the only notable things he did in that match.
Any article worth its salt about Quins' failed signings would have included Cronje, Henjak, Luscombe, James and Barry, among many others. The recent ones feel like relatively small fry really!
de wet Barry is my personal Worst Quins Signing in the years I've been following the team (2004 onwards). I imagine he was on decent money as a recent and much-capped Springbok international, but, as I recall, he was blunt in attack and reckless in defence. I remember Luscombe being underwhelming, but Barry for me was actively awful. Factoring in the level of player (seasoned international), assumed cost, age (29), expected role (1st-choice centre), he's hard to beat.
Picking out players who were clearly signed as short-term cover / squad back-up, for one-season or less, as the article does, seems rather pointless in a list of useless signings.
The experience of Barry is coloured by his red card for that high tackle on Mat Tait (which was overturned at the citing panel based on the replay, which showed that Tait tripped into the tackle - it would probably have been a yellow even by today's standards).
But I think Stuart Abbot and Geo Cronje trump Barry, simply because they never played at all.
IIRC, the coaches spoke pretty positively about Sackey - he was hired to do a pretty specific job covering some long term injuries, and did the job.
I was once told (I'm not sure how true is is) that he was looking at retiring and was talked into covering some injuries. But, it was in his contract that we would only play a specific number of games.
It probably wasn't a bad bit of business.
However - lets talk about Winston Stanley . . .
...
But I think Stuart Abbot and Geo Cronje trump Barry, simply because they never played at all.
Abbot played. I think he got a red card in the double header and obviously his career ending injury some time later. Or have I made the card up and the injury was in the DH?
Usual dumbass (recycled) rubbish from ruck.
The only valid one on that list is PDJ.
As I mentioned the last time ruck published this article, Sackey was fine. We got him at the end of his career, he played a few games as cover and didn't make any egregious mistakes.
They'll be so pleased they've generated this much debate...
Well, we could talk about the best value signings instead. Who were the ones we plucked from nowhere or the scrapheap and turned out to be great buys? Off the top of my head:
Karl Dickson - from Bedford to a reliable backup to Danny
Dave Ward - from the Pirates to a fan favourite
Olly Kohn - from the physio table to a Premiership winner
Tyrone Green - from relative to obscurity to seamlessly replacing our most capped player
Mike Ross - from the scrapheap of provincial rugby to an Ireland international
Nick Easter - from nowhere to an RWC Final
Andy Gomarsall - from pub rugby to an RWC Final
Will Greenwood - from a Tigers discard to an RWC Winner.
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