Warrington signed a great one who isn't just a tackling merchant and has made more yardage than Havard and Cooper put together.

[code
Player Tackles Meters
Paul Vaughan 131 840
Ethan Havard 150 454
Mike Cooper 103 323
Brad Singleton 80 246 *played 1 game less
[/code

How many carries?

EDIT: I looked at this for Vaughan and Havard.

Vaughan 100 carries, so 8.4 average
Havard 63 carries, so 7.2 average

Further edit:

Cooper 44 carries, so 7.3 average

I think it was common knowledge Vaughan was a fantastic forward during his time in the NRL but he can be trouble off the field. Wire have taken the gamble and it’s paying off handsomely so far. We’ll see how it continues to play out over the next few months/years, as he’s settled in fully and the good drinking weather of the summer comes round. There is far less scrutiny on the players here, so he’ll probably be fine.

I'm not bothering to look at the minute, but how is the rest of the props going for Warrington?

We've made more yards per carry as a team than they have, but we've also made 22 more errors than they have and have the joint worst error rate in the comp along with Cas. We average 13.2 errors a game to Wire's 8.8. They've made almost 170 more carries than we have.

If we can keep hold of the ball we'll head in the right direction.

We need to improve a hell of a lot to be competitive at Warrington, that's for sure.

It doesn't really make for pretty reading tbh.

Basically our props get through at least 10% less work (Carries+Tackles) than Wire's, as an average. Our props have also made the same amount of errors despite 32% less carries with the ball. Below is just props from both teams.

[codeTeam Tackles TK% Carries Metres Avg. Gain Errors Penalties
Warrington 492 96% 313 2,365 7.6 9 7
Wigan 518 92% 213 1,595 7.5 9 9[/code

They also have McGuire and Dudson to come into their pack.

Looking more into it, basically our backrow and centres pick up all of the slack from our props. Wingers' workrate is fairly equal.

These stats are very predictable though. Every season I think "surely Wigan will throw some cap at a top class prop" and every season it's a relief they don't.

Some of the recruitment decisions at Wigan defy belief sometimes IMO - I'd be so annoyed as a Wigan fan as it is so obvious.

We did that in 2020 but it didn't work out.
We did that in 2022 but it didn't work out.
We've done that in 2023 with the same set as 2022, time will tell.

As JonH says time and time again though, we don't use our props in the traditional sense so their stats won't necessarily match those of other sides. We have made more average yards per carry as a team than Warrington have. If we can cut out the errors and have more ball then we'll see all of our go forward stats improve. "Bang average" is the knee jerk reaction of all knee jerk reactions.

An average of 13 errors a game (let's say each side has 40 sets) means we are down to 27 with the ball. Then we give away an average of 5.5 penalties. We are starving ourselves of the ball.

Saying that though - only Warrington have scored more tries (27 to 25) however we have the lowest number of carries in the comp, so we aren't doing too bad when we learn to stick hold of the ball.

Like I said above, knee jerk reaction.

Did you? Who were these top class props you signed in 2020 and 2022? I'm assuming you are not saying Mago and Ellis are top class props - they were punts. Cooper is a decent, ageing, fairly small prop. Better than what you had but not someone I'd put in the top class bracket. It looked to me like you recycled some average props for some slightly less average props.

Edit: I guess it's George Burgess for 2020 which is a fair point but there was a fair bit of concern over his condition.

I think Wigan tried to pinch a couple of top props with Ellis/Mago last season, going with the Field/French model of signing players on the fringes of NRL first teams, who they believe have talent but for whatever reason aren’t getting regular games. Unfortunately I don’t think it’s worked. Makes no mistake, they were fringe NRL/reserve grade props but there had to be a reason for that and I think we’ve seen it here.

It’s different with Field/French and backs in general. The NRL want backs to be 6ft plus and 15 stones or more and you don’t need to be that over here. They’ve been exceptional signings and I think there’s more where they came from. It looks a tougher task to nab a cheap forward and I think we’ll have to move away from that strategy, certainly in terms of every NRL forward signing we make. You can get guys like Sironen, Matautia, Vaughan etc, who do play first grade on a regular basis and presumably don’t cost the earth. A mixture of more established forwards and fringe first teamers would feel a better balance.

Exactly, and then bringing in Cooper.