2019 Warrington Squad Rankings: Part Three

The time has arrived for the third and final part of my 2019 Warrington Squad Rankings, where I am positioning every single player to have donned the primrose and blue this season, from worst to best. Part Three will reveal my top five players of 2019...

These rankings are based on my personal opinions and how I've viewed the players' performances this season, and how I feel they have performed against expectation of their own individual standards. This countdown has formed three parts, finally now culminating in the announcement of my top five players of the 2019 season. 

For anyone who missed part one, you can catch it here. Eliminated in the first part were Matty Smith, Luther Burrell, Pat Moran, Riley Dean, Luis Johnson, Jack Johnson, Lama Tasi, Harvey Livett, Declan Patton, Josh Thewlis, Ryan Atkins, Danny Walker and Ben Westwood. If you missed part two, it is available here. Ranking in positions 17-6 were Ben Murdoch-Masila, Sitaleki Akauola, Jason Clark, Jake Mamo, Ben Currie, Jack Hughes, Chris Hill, Tom Lineham, Toby King, Stefan Ratchford, Matt Davis and Josh Charnley.

Right then, without any further ado, it's time to reveal the top five...

5) MIKE COOPER

TOP STAT: 

Cooper was Wire's top offloader in 2019, getting the ball away 50 times over the course of the Super League season, the fifth highest of anyone in the league.

Coming in in fifth place is prop forward Mike Cooper. Despite somehow missing out on a place in the national team once again, the former St. George man has been excellent in the front row for Wire this season. Metres-wise, he is always one of the best for us and an extremely reliable performer. He has crossed the line four times this season, with his most recent try coming against London. Cooper has also been superb in the tackle and rarely misses one. I would say that as the year has gone on his performance level has decreased ever so slightly as our ability to dominate the forward pack has fallen in the final part of the season. Still a top-class performer, and a key element of this team.

4) BRYSON GOODWIN

TOP STAT: 

Goodwin played 20 consecutive games from May until the end of the season, finishing his Warrington career with 61 appearances for the club.

I don't think people realise how much we're going to miss Bryson Goodwin at Warrington. I think he has quietly gone under the radar as one of the best centres in the league this year - probably in a rung just below Kevin Naiqama and Oliver Gildart, but right up there alongside Jake Connor, Konrad Hurrell, Harry Newman and Krisnan Inu. With ten tries he finishes the year as Wire's joint-fourth highest scorer - not bad when he didn't get his first until Good Friday. Since then though, Goodwin has only missed one match since then, becoming a permanent fixture in the team. Despite his departure being announced mid-season, there has been no hint of him downing tools or letting his performance levels drop - he has been superb in both defence and attack. A tryscorer in the Challenge Cup semi-final and the maker of a game-changing moment in the final - a sensational tackle on Tommy Makinson when the St Helens man looked certain to score. A good running game and a nice step on him, he is also the scorer of our last try in our own half - which depressingly, was back in June against Hull KR. He doesn't quite make the top three because he has been part of a left edge that has been very suspect defensively all year - though I don't put too much blame on him for this. We'll do well to replace his scoring rate and running game next season - it may be that we don't realise how good he has been in his two years with us until after he has left. One of my favourite centres I've seen at Wire.

3) JOE PHILBIN

TOP STAT: 

With 31 games to his name, Philbin was missing just three times throughout the course of the season, and Wire lost on each of those three occasions.

If you'd told me at the start of the year that Joe Philbin would rank higher than Josh Charnley, Stefan Ratchford, Tom Lineham, Mike Cooper, Bryson Goodwin, Jason Clark, Ben Murdoch-Masila and Chris Hill, I'd have said you were crazy. I saw him as a mediocre interchange player, but he has proved me completely wrong with an excellent year in the Wire shirt. A tryscorer in both the Challenge Cup semi-final at Bolton and the final at Wembley, Philbin has reserved his best performances for the big occasions - those two cup games as well as some huge efforts in wins over Wigan. The homegrown forward has cemented himself as first interchange and is always tremendous in terms of effort and metre-making. His entrance on the field always gives the team a lift, particularly with his first few carries. After a slow first few games of the season, Philbin has been absolutely superb with hardly a bad performance at any point. There has been a lot of clamour for Wire to sign a new prop for 2020, but I honestly feel that in Philbin we have a ready-made one. Steve Price mentioned early in the year that he wanted to give Philbin some gametime in the prop forward position from the start, though he finished the year with just one start at prop. There's no doubt that his most effective performances have come from the bench, but if we could find a way to have him in from the start at prop and have him play the majority of the match, I feel we'd be a stronger team. He is also one of the many, many members of the squad to have played at loose forward in 2019 - in fact all but one of his starts actually came there. While he was by no means poor there, I do think that the best usage of Philbin is either from the bench or as a prop from the start. With just eight errors in 26 Super League appearances, he has been one of our most consistent, reliable players this season and it is only because of the sheer brilliance of the top two that he doesn't find himself as this year's star man.

2) BLAKE AUSTIN

TOP STAT: 

With 19 tries in 30 appearances, Blake Austin finishes his first Wire season as the club's top scorer.

Blake Austin is surely a candidate for Super League's best new signing in 2019 and finds himself both in the Super League Dream Team and on the five-man shortlist for the Man of Steel. 19 tries is an utterly magnificent return for a halfback, particularly when you consider that the last of those came in June - when he was running at a rate of 19 in 21. In his first season in England, Austin has found a huge amount of pressure placed on him as Wire's main creator-in-chief, with a lack of imaginative quality in the players surrounding him. However, it was clear from his debut against Leeds in Round One that he would have no problem living up to the hype - a gorgeous try after a clever one-two with Toby King. The next few games were a little less flamboyant from Austin, though his game management and organisation skills were shown with his brilliant field-kicking game. Hull FC away was where he hit top form. Four tries at the KCOM featuring dummies and feints galore was the start of an unbelievable run of form - Austin scored 11 tries in six appearances and cemented himself as the best player in the first part of the season. His range of passing, his running game, his ability to bundle his way over the line, and of course his wonderful quality with the ball in hand and space in front of him. Some gorgeous long-distance tries including a couple at Hull, an absolutely delicious effort at home to Huddersfield, one which featured a great hand-off on Tony Gigot against Catalans, and of course, that Magic Weekend try at Anfield against Wigan. At times this season he has carried the side with Clark and it's been clear that frustration has got to Austin a few times when the team has struggled, and his injury came at a terrible time - just as the business end of the season approached. This meant that he missed the Challenge Cup Final and was rushed back for the playoffs, when he clearly wasn't fit, and ended up being unable to complete the Castleford game due to another knock. My only issue with Austin this year has been defensively he leaves a bit to be desired - he has actually missed more tackles than any other Wire player this year. This is only a minor gripe though as the immense quality he brings to the attack completely overrides any defensive deficiencies and the fact of the matter is that he has looked a cut above the vast majority of the squad most of the year. All that has stopped Austin from winning this countdown is quite a noticeable dip in form from June onwards - just three tries in his last 14 games after 16 in his first 16. The prospect of Austin operating in the halves next to Gareth Widdop next year is a beautiful one - and hopefully a title-winning one.

1) DARYL CLARK

TOP STAT: 

Warrington didn't win a single game that Daryl Clark didn't play in, failed to win a game without a Clark try since July and was Wire's top tackler with 882 tackles completed, the top carrier with an average of 9.53 metres per carry, top assister with 18 try assists, top tackle buster with 124, won man of the match in the Challenge Cup Final and our top performer by a mile. 

There can be no doubt, can there? Daryl Clark has not only been Warrington's best player this year, but also one of the most consistently outstanding players in Super League all season. Earlier this season, I labelled Clark as Super League's Virgil Van Dijk - you get some players who are consistently good. But Clark, like Van Dijk, is consistently great. Every single week, no matter the opposition, circumstances, stadium or how the rest of the team is playing, Clark puts in an eight, nine or ten out of ten time after time after time. The highlight of his season was undoubtedly Wembley, where his simply breathtaking performance made him only the third hooker to ever win the Lance Todd Trophy for star man in the Challenge Cup Final after a heroic all-action display which featured the last try of the match from a great dummy-half scoot and a superhuman tackle to send Regan Grace into touch when the Welshman looked certain to score. Statistically, no-one comes remotely close to Clark both defensively and offensively. At times, Clark has single-handedly dragged this team into games when it has been struggling - think of the try against Catalans at home when we were going nowhere. A few minutes later, Clark had scored a superb try and laid Austin off to turn a 0-4 deficit into a 12-4 lead. That performance against Wigan in March - 30 tackles, eight tackle busts, 166 metres and an assist. It's ludicrous how good he's been. The only negative about Clark's season is that we have become so reliant on him both in defence and also in attack - his great runs from dummy-half have become our main source of metres and creativity. That moment on Easter Monday when he raced back 60 metres to make a last-ditch tackle after an interception, then was first man in the next tackle to force a knock-on - absurd. The try against Wigan in the Challenge Cup - just sensational. The FIFTY SIX tackles against Castleford in the playoffs and 109 metres completed - unreal. Here's a stat for you - we've won three games all season without a Clark try or assist. THREE. An absolute delight to have him in our team and without him, we'd have been nowhere this year. We should consider ourselves very lucky to have him, because he wouldn't look out of place in the NRL. The man is superhuman, and quite comfortably Warrington's player of the season. 2019 was the year that Clark cemented himself as the best hooker in Super League. An absolute joke that he isn't on the Man of Steel shortlist.

And that brings us to the very end of my 2019 Warrington Squad Rankings. I hope you have enjoyed reading the three parts, let me know your thoughts in the comments or by contacting the blog on Twitter @aloosewire. Check back for the next instalment of my 2019 season review content very soon!

Daniel (@aloosewire)