Mild mannered Janitor wrote:
I started watching Hull FC about 30 years ago, so I never saw Casey play for Hull. Did you?
Because without doing so, how can you say he was "hardly considered the star man" or the others were "clearly superior and contributed more as a Hull player"?
He played for 5 years, in an era when Hull FC were nowhere near anything like any honours (I think we made it to the JP final in 1975).
Jason Smith is a in the list, he was only here for 4 years of which he played in only a fraction of the games. Peter Sterling is within the Hall of Fame for playing for less than 1 and a half seasons. I haven't looked but I would be astonished if Garry Schofield was not in contention.
Casey's spell as coach should have no bearing on him as a player in Black and White.
I'll admit I hardly saw Casey in a Hull shirt, they were poor years for the club, I saw more before he arrived (though the memories from my youth are a bit hazy now) and much more after. However the stats don't do Casey any favours.
I think we both agree that to be Hall of Fame worthy a player must have helped the team perform by making an above average contribution to it. This means playing at a higher level than your contempories for a sustained period of time.
Of the contenders in the vote Ellerington and Crane played much longer for the club than Casey. Not many people are around who saw Ellerington play but captaining trophy winning Hull teams and getting international honours suggest he was certainly no mug.
Crane I have seen plenty of and most Hull fans will agree that he was a fine player, both have substantially longer Hull careers than Casey, won trophies and international honours with the club and are unquestionably far more deserving cases.
Smith had a shorter and more injury blighted Hull career than Casey. However in terms of quality there is no contest - a player good enough to get in the best representative sides in the world compared one who gained no honours playing in the lower reaches of the Rugby League. The massive gap in ability and level of performance makes Smith a far superior choice to Casey.
To summarise, Casey played in poor Hull teams which won nothing with him there. He gained no representative honours with Hull and I certainly don't remember him as a stand out. There were other players over this period like Sullivan, Harrison, Hancock and Boxall who provided more.
So yes the other nominees were clearly superior to him.
What I was disturbed about is that there are other better players for Hull than Casey that weren't even nominated. Gary Divorty for one, Jon Sharp if you class him as a loose forward just out of the more recent players and I'm sure that going back you will find others.
Anyway thanks to the blunder of nominating him and the actions of truly pathetic individuals like Easty and Philb he may end up in the Hull Hall of Fame unless the voting process is cleaned up to remove those submitted by these retards and their ilk.
BTW Schofield is in the Hull HOF, despite everything he was a great player though so no arguments from me on that one.
