Ohh, a HDM internet poll, well thats me convinced. it must be true then. Seeing the level of "debate" that goes on there, it makes this place look like the oxford university debating society.

how many times did you vote? or did you just send pms to all the hkr fans on here and the unoffical forum?

About as concrete as paul cooke telling some bloke on a bus that agar has a contract on the table for him for 2011

Bless

bless indeed.



wheres big spender?

Back to your original point (which appears to have kicked off a fair few thoughts on here) i do not believe Cooke was average or less than average when he played for us. I've not had confidence in us converting field position since he went. I know he carries a certain amount of hatred from some Hull fans but to allow that to cloud your judgement is a bit ott imo.



It's interesting too to see the stats pulled out around assists. I guess they dont tell the full story, for example, if cooke passed to yeamo and then yeamo put raynor in cooke wouldnt get the assist. I also think assists dont show the leadership and direction a player may give to the attacking options. Cooke was a far better player for FC than those assist stats show. I know i'm fighting a losing battle here vs some FC fans but i just find it weird that he's been labelled as an average player for FC. Maybe his form since joining Rovers would deserve that tag but not his time with us.

I agree with you Dave he was very good for us and although stats are useful i think to much can be read into them, for example if teams regarded Cooke as a threat it may mean he was targeted resulting in Hull scoring a try elsewhere on the pitch due to an overlap...etc



My opinion fwiw is he was out of order towards Hull FC, we would have done better with him for the last two and a bit years, and the reason he hasnt been as succesful at HKR is he is no longer the main pivot/playmaker and in the first season he needed time to settle.

cooke was a good player at Hull, certainly above average, however he wasn't "exceptional" as you previously stated and you also discount the fact that he had great quality around him making the job easier.



kear built his whole game plan around hitting the left side so it's hardly surprising cooke was involved in a high % of tries in some shape or form. Doesn't mean it was all about cooke. Yeaman and Raynor were GB centre and winger at the time.

Spot on. Some people look back with rose tinted glasses sometimes IMO. We had actually become too reliant on our left hand side attack and had been sussed by the opposition on this. I remember McNamara saying thesame after they had beaten us at the KC in 2007.



Not since Jason Smith have we asked questions in attack all across the park, we built our success on the back of a great team ethic and workmanlike pack which had under rated skillful players in the likes of Mcmenemy.

Still interested in the definition of it, as it's clearly miles away from tries + assists. If it's touching the ball in a scoring set, then Richard Swain's and for that matter Richard Horne's stats would be interesting. 73% implies that everyone else only contributed 27% collectively. If Richard Swain touched the ball in 73% of scoring sets also, then it puts the stat into context. Not disputing Cooke's importance, but the stat of 73% (or 83%) attributable to him just seems high when he had assists+tries of 21% (or 19%).

My [iguess[/i is 2. Apart from fairly rare things like interception tries and breaks from dummy half early in the count, half backs should nearly always be involved in a scoring [iset[/i.

Always a cracking argument!



Not really, if the stats are involving everyone who touched the ball on the scoring set then Richard Swain or any Hooker must be in the high 90%.

I'm just sick of Rovers fans saying he meant more to us than he did! IMO Swain leaving had just as much influence. I'm also sick of Hull fans claiming he didn't make a difference also.

An assist to me (and most people) is the final pass or kick before a try. In which case Cooke was no more valuable to us than Horne.