Joined: Sep 01 2011 Posts: 2484 Location: Full back
...has retired age 35. Joined Dewsbury for this season but has picked up a serious injury. Had a great two years for us, and even though there's a bit of biterness over his leaving I wish him all the best.
ONELOVE God bless the flag that I live under the colours of primrose and blue.
garyhulsefan wrote:...has retired age 35. Joined Dewsbury for this season but has picked up a serious injury. Had a great two years for us, and even though there's a bit of biterness over his leaving I wish him all the best.
not from me.
They offered him stupid money (after he said he wanted to stay) and he left for a much better club.
Good player.
"Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!" Matthew 4:19
I thought he was a class forward and a good bloke.
No bitterness from him about him leaving, he's no more a judas for leaving us to join Saints than Westwood, Atkins, Myler, Ratchford etc are for joining us...
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Joined: Dec 22 2001 Posts: 5893 Location: Warrington
Shame for him that his career has ended like that, but at least he kept going until 35.
At the time with how we were he took the best option as he'd had bad injuries before joining us, so when a big opportunity like that came along he needed to go.
It was a tough one to swallow at the time. Fozzard had more or less been consigned to the scrapheap when we picked him up, so it's great that he's been able to build an excellent career since.
He comes across as a decent guy and I wish him well in whatever he does next.
Its 10 years ago that we signed him. Like you say he was on the scrapheap and I think that was one of the things that left some Warrington fans bitter when he joined Saints, we had given him a chance when no-one else would and so some of our fans felt that he owed us more than 2 years.
But bear in mind as well that we were also on the scrapheap at that time, we were desperate for signings because DVDV made most of our players contracts expire when his did so that any new coach could bring in his own players but after the farce with Neil Kelly we were left rushing to sign players hence our other prop signings were Dale Laughton, Matt Sturm and Mark Hilton who was another injury write off who had been without a club through 2001 and not played a game (although like Fozzard, signing Hilton ended up being a good move)
Fozzard was a huge risk as he had missed virtually three full seasons out of the last four, but from what I remember came out at the time, the contract we signed him on meant he bore the risk as he would have been released instantly if his arm had gone again.
I remember being quite excited about seeing how Fozzard would go because although he had been written off as career over in many circles, there were a few comments from pros and ex pros in the press at the time pointing out that in the one season he'd been fit at Huddersfield he'd been up there with the top props in the league despite playing for a bottom of the table side, and that was straight away the form he showed with us, he was a huge improvement on Andrew Gee and Martin Masella from the year before. I know Danny Nutley had been good as a hard yards man but Fozzard was what we had wanted for a while, a big tall guy who would hit the line at pace and get the opposition running backwards. I know in those crap days of 2002 one of the few highlights of our team was watching Fozzard get the ball and ram into the tackler with some venom.
Another amusing thing I remember from that era is that as soon as he started to look good for us there were loads of opposing fans complaining about the arm padding he had, they said "if he needs that much padding he shouldn't be playing the game". I remember some busybody writing into Boots N All when Stuart Cummings was on it, protesting against it, and Cummings just said well his arm padding is checked by the referee before every game so if there was anything dangerous he would have to change it. Once he joined Saints though and was in a top side the attention was off him and nobody seemed to fuss about his arm guard any more.
As marcianwalton says if you met him he's a top guy, I met him a couple of times when he was at Saints, he was real good chat with lots of opinions about the game and had some good stories about his time at the Wire and seemed to really respect the Wire as a club and be glad that he had played for us. I definitely wish him all the best for his retirement, top guy and in my era of watching Warrington since the late 80s he gets in my all time Warrington 17.
Challenge Cup winners 2009 2010 2012 2019 League Leaders 2011 2016
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