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| karetaker:
Matt Turner as posted on X that he is sitting down with Stuart Middleton later this week and to send your questions in.
I'm sure, judging by their match report comment section, these questions will also be as censored as a Stalin-era photograph! | | |
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| Fantastic Mr Cat:BarbedWire2:Wires71:BarbedWire2:Wires71:BarbedWire2:
The reasons/contributors/excuses just aren’t there for Powell. There was not a performance to point to and say “when my plan is played to, we compete against big teams” whereas Sam can do that.
And to answer a point from above, it’s not justifying who bad we are now because we’ve been worse. It’s still about who can take us from a plucky “also ran” to a winner. With Williams, Dufty, Sneyd, Walker and Currie all fit next week and beyond, Sam has an opportunity to get a song out of this team and show us and the board that he’s worthy of another year. The ball is in their court now, and by dumb luck alone if we do pick up we could somehow still stumble into the 6 and get a free shot at it with no expectation.
You make a good argument and I may agree with you. I will just challenge some points. 1. "When my plan is played to we compete against big teams" - this may hold true if you ignore 2024 CC Final against Wigan (CC) - lost 2024 Hull KR (league) - lost 2024 Leigh away (league) - lost 2025 Wigan at Vegas (league) - embarrassed 2025 Leigh away (league) - lost 2025 Wigan at Magic (league) - lost 2025 Hull KR home (league) - lost 2. Agree with the 2nd point. Of course it will take a leap of faith as those players were all present at the start of 2025 when we lost against the likes of Wakefield and Hull FC at home. I am more concerned why we look a different team in the Challenge Cup games than we do in the league. It's like the team really focus on that and give everything whereas the league games are not treated like that. If we performed in the league as we did in the Challenge Cup we would be comfortably in the top 4. Indeed if those 4 cup game wins this season were exchanged for readily achievable wins over Wakefield (Home), Hull (Home), Huddersfield (home), Castleford (away) we would be 4th now and well set for the playoffs. But interesting times and some hard games ahead. We will see. I agree to a point, we haven’t won in those big events. Wembley last year we choked, despite starting really well. If I’m being brutally honest, one thing I would question is kicking 2 points when they are down a middle forward and we’re only down a fullback. That decision gave Wigan a chance to get off the ropes and they never really looked back. Almost as maddening as the panicked play where we throw the ball wide early in the set 13 vs 12 four minutes in and lose Dufty to the sin bin. We choked. But, that didn’t happen this year. We were in control for long periods but ultimately got beat by a) a superb team who defended relentlessly and b) an individual mistake. Without forensically analysing each game, it’s tough to say what went wrong with each, but what we can say with absolute certainty is that we’ll never win anything if we don’t learn some lessons. Wakefield away for example, we went behind early with a bit of lag from the cup game the week previous. But dragged ourselves into it just before half time. Then we drop the kick off. We had Saints 10-0 down at our place, let the kick off go onto touch. Cup final, failed to defend a kick. Even Cas last week, kick goes through and to a man we stand still, Fitz has a grab at it and nobody else is moving. If my memory was better, I bet there are 10+ times where we have released pressure by failing to defend a kick this year alone. That is my gripe with the coaching, control what’s in your control, practice defending your weaknesses. Sneyd again is an example, anyone doing video on us will spend 90% of the attack time on how to get at Sneyd. We haven’t found a way to protect him yet, despite having an excellent defensive centre who has just been moved to the right alongside an excellent defensive half (Williams). We have got Jake Thewlis, Wrench and Sneyd together who are all vulnerable, and Fitzgibbon who is aggressive and gets up off the line which ultimately exposes them further. This is the first week off we have had though, so it might be useful to work on those relationships and put some quality time on the training field, it’s difficult to do maintenance work on a moving production line. But we need to see some progress on that one, or Sneyd becomes a very expensive special teams player. Yes all fair, but the challenge was to the "Sam gets us up for the big teams". I listed 7 such games in the last 18 months where we lost fairly readily to challenge that preposition of yours. In the act of fairness I omitted the Hull KR CC final loss (as that was a very close game), the Hull KR playoff game loss, and the Wigan home game loss in 2024 where we played a weakened side. They were still losses though which makes 10. All ifs and maybes. The Warrington Guardian archive is full of various coaches over the years talking about learning lessons. I take it with a pinch of salt as the coach cannot say "we aren't good enough 1-17" to consistently perform which we all know to be the case currently. But there is the nagging thought in my mind, and others' mind, that squad strength notwithstanding we dont look particularly well coached this season, nor do we look hard to score against. We could counter that with games where we were expected of getting blown away or beaten comfortably and turned up and did a job, either being beaten by close margin or winning. The whole cup run this season, Wigan at Magic etc. I agree about our defence. It’s worrying. We are so good at pushing attackers back, it was a real strength of ours last year. When we do it well, we can be effective. But we are too indisciplined for it to matter right now. We can’t build pressure because we blink first. That is letting Cas out of the in goal three times last week, the Jordy Crowther ‘late contact’ on kick pressure a few weeks ago, Rod Tai’s hands on the ball at Wembley which we even lost a challenge on. We’re constantly letting teams off the hook and allowing them in to attack us. When it comes down to it, Hull KR at Wembley didn’t give away a penalty in kicking distance despite a barrage of pressure, the game was decided on Ben Currie giving one away. That is the difference between the two on the day. I don’t know the remedy, but it certainly isn’t publicly challenging officiating or trying to milk penalties in a lame attempt of whataboutery. Anyway, let’s see what the response is on Friday. There are more questions than answers right now. pretty sure sky have said in recent weeks, we're the least penalised team in the league this year, Yes when I looked a couple of weeks back we were the least penalised team. Not that it is that important but as regards giving in away penalties we are not as bad as others. | | | |
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| sally cinnamon:BarbedWire2:
It was a failure, by every metric and almost everyone brought in during that period is now gone, Harrison and Dufty aside (Vaughan at seasons end). And that is actually really haunting, given the list includes but not limited to Minikin, Russell, Matautia, Holmes, Kasiano, Dudson, McGuire, Magoulias, Nicholson, Bullock, Drinkwater, Wardle. Add that to the players that left during that period, Hill, Cooper, Charnley, Widdop, Hughes, Mulhearn, Davis, Clark, Dean, Longstaff…
That’s 20+ players gone since Price left in 2022. And I’d argue the second list is a better list of players than the first, 4 of them have gone on to represent England since leaving us as scrap.
Of all the points raised on this thread this for me is the most significant. If the Powell era "clear out" had brought in better players than we cleared out we would be in a different place. Powell would probably still be coach. Surely, it can't all be Powell's fault if you consider what players were available at the time of making wholesale changes. The situation is even worse for next season with players moving on & a lack of quality to replace them with ,either from rival clubs or overseas rejects who come over with inflated reputations only to revert to type before the ink is dry on their contract. Best policy for us is to promote & build on our own youth system. | | |
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| Smiffy27:Fantastic Mr Cat:BarbedWire2:Wires71:BarbedWire2:Wires71:BarbedWire2:
The reasons/contributors/excuses just aren’t there for Powell. There was not a performance to point to and say “when my plan is played to, we compete against big teams” whereas Sam can do that.
And to answer a point from above, it’s not justifying who bad we are now because we’ve been worse. It’s still about who can take us from a plucky “also ran” to a winner. With Williams, Dufty, Sneyd, Walker and Currie all fit next week and beyond, Sam has an opportunity to get a song out of this team and show us and the board that he’s worthy of another year. The ball is in their court now, and by dumb luck alone if we do pick up we could somehow still stumble into the 6 and get a free shot at it with no expectation.
You make a good argument and I may agree with you. I will just challenge some points. 1. "When my plan is played to we compete against big teams" - this may hold true if you ignore 2024 CC Final against Wigan (CC) - lost 2024 Hull KR (league) - lost 2024 Leigh away (league) - lost 2025 Wigan at Vegas (league) - embarrassed 2025 Leigh away (league) - lost 2025 Wigan at Magic (league) - lost 2025 Hull KR home (league) - lost 2. Agree with the 2nd point. Of course it will take a leap of faith as those players were all present at the start of 2025 when we lost against the likes of Wakefield and Hull FC at home. I am more concerned why we look a different team in the Challenge Cup games than we do in the league. It's like the team really focus on that and give everything whereas the league games are not treated like that. If we performed in the league as we did in the Challenge Cup we would be comfortably in the top 4. Indeed if those 4 cup game wins this season were exchanged for readily achievable wins over Wakefield (Home), Hull (Home), Huddersfield (home), Castleford (away) we would be 4th now and well set for the playoffs. But interesting times and some hard games ahead. We will see. I agree to a point, we haven’t won in those big events. Wembley last year we choked, despite starting really well. If I’m being brutally honest, one thing I would question is kicking 2 points when they are down a middle forward and we’re only down a fullback. That decision gave Wigan a chance to get off the ropes and they never really looked back. Almost as maddening as the panicked play where we throw the ball wide early in the set 13 vs 12 four minutes in and lose Dufty to the sin bin. We choked. But, that didn’t happen this year. We were in control for long periods but ultimately got beat by a) a superb team who defended relentlessly and b) an individual mistake. Without forensically analysing each game, it’s tough to say what went wrong with each, but what we can say with absolute certainty is that we’ll never win anything if we don’t learn some lessons. Wakefield away for example, we went behind early with a bit of lag from the cup game the week previous. But dragged ourselves into it just before half time. Then we drop the kick off. We had Saints 10-0 down at our place, let the kick off go onto touch. Cup final, failed to defend a kick. Even Cas last week, kick goes through and to a man we stand still, Fitz has a grab at it and nobody else is moving. If my memory was better, I bet there are 10+ times where we have released pressure by failing to defend a kick this year alone. That is my gripe with the coaching, control what’s in your control, practice defending your weaknesses. Sneyd again is an example, anyone doing video on us will spend 90% of the attack time on how to get at Sneyd. We haven’t found a way to protect him yet, despite having an excellent defensive centre who has just been moved to the right alongside an excellent defensive half (Williams). We have got Jake Thewlis, Wrench and Sneyd together who are all vulnerable, and Fitzgibbon who is aggressive and gets up off the line which ultimately exposes them further. This is the first week off we have had though, so it might be useful to work on those relationships and put some quality time on the training field, it’s difficult to do maintenance work on a moving production line. But we need to see some progress on that one, or Sneyd becomes a very expensive special teams player. Yes all fair, but the challenge was to the "Sam gets us up for the big teams". I listed 7 such games in the last 18 months where we lost fairly readily to challenge that preposition of yours. In the act of fairness I omitted the Hull KR CC final loss (as that was a very close game), the Hull KR playoff game loss, and the Wigan home game loss in 2024 where we played a weakened side. They were still losses though which makes 10. All ifs and maybes. The Warrington Guardian archive is full of various coaches over the years talking about learning lessons. I take it with a pinch of salt as the coach cannot say "we aren't good enough 1-17" to consistently perform which we all know to be the case currently. But there is the nagging thought in my mind, and others' mind, that squad strength notwithstanding we dont look particularly well coached this season, nor do we look hard to score against. We could counter that with games where we were expected of getting blown away or beaten comfortably and turned up and did a job, either being beaten by close margin or winning. The whole cup run this season, Wigan at Magic etc. I agree about our defence. It’s worrying. We are so good at pushing attackers back, it was a real strength of ours last year. When we do it well, we can be effective. But we are too indisciplined for it to matter right now. We can’t build pressure because we blink first. That is letting Cas out of the in goal three times last week, the Jordy Crowther ‘late contact’ on kick pressure a few weeks ago, Rod Tai’s hands on the ball at Wembley which we even lost a challenge on. We’re constantly letting teams off the hook and allowing them in to attack us. When it comes down to it, Hull KR at Wembley didn’t give away a penalty in kicking distance despite a barrage of pressure, the game was decided on Ben Currie giving one away. That is the difference between the two on the day. I don’t know the remedy, but it certainly isn’t publicly challenging officiating or trying to milk penalties in a lame attempt of whataboutery. Anyway, let’s see what the response is on Friday. There are more questions than answers right now. pretty sure sky have said in recent weeks, we're the least penalised team in the league this year, Yes when I looked a couple of weeks back we were the least penalised team. Not that it is that important but as regards giving in away penalties we are not as bad as others. The point I was making re: discipline was cracking under pressure. There are penalties worth giving away, classic gamesmanship like slowing down the ruck when someone is on our line to recover and get into shape, or early set “six again” to stop momentum. The ones I object to are late set penalties where we’d done the hard work defending the set already, even worse giving away a penalty for late contact on a clearance kick. What do we stand to gain, it’s a non contested kick. In response to the players that we lost but would have kept, Chris Hill tops the list. Best prop in the league last month and was in the England team in 2022 and 2023. Cooper, absolutely would have kept. Vaughan aside those two are head and shoulders better than any other prop we have or have had since. We completely botched the Wardle deal and Charnley is/was a really effective winger and was our top try scorer at the point too being scapegoated. Hindsight is wonderful isn’t it, Hill could have crumbled and retired after a few weeks at Huddersfield, so I don’t doubt the logic of losing player, more so the complete lack of logic in their replacements when Joe Bullock and Gil Dudson come in. Swapping £1 for 50p. | | |
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| BarbedWire2:
The point I was making re: discipline was cracking under pressure. There are penalties worth giving away, classic gamesmanship like slowing down the ruck when someone is on our line to recover and get into shape, or early set “six again” to stop momentum. The ones I object to are late set penalties where we’d done the hard work defending the set already, even worse giving away a penalty for late contact on a clearance kick. What do we stand to gain, it’s a non contested kick.
In response to the players that we lost but would have kept, Chris Hill tops the list. Best prop in the league last month and was in the England team in 2022 and 2023. Cooper, absolutely would have kept. Vaughan aside those two are head and shoulders better than any other prop we have or have had since. We completely botched the Wardle deal and Charnley is/was a really effective winger and was our top try scorer at the point too being scapegoated. Hindsight is wonderful isn’t it, Hill could have crumbled and retired after a few weeks at Huddersfield, so I don’t doubt the logic of losing player, more so the complete lack of logic in their replacements when Joe Bullock and Gil Dudson come in. Swapping £1 for 50p.
I agree on Joe Bullock and Gil Dudson. Terrible signings. But, in my opinion, you undermine your otherwise valid argument by being very selective, and unfairly balanced in your comparisons of incomings and outgoings during 2022 - 2023. One example being excluding Vaughan who came in who was more than an adequate replacement for Mike Cooper! A far superior player. Also listing Widdop, Hughes, Davis, Dean and Longstaff as regrettable exits whilst not even mentioning the replacements of Dufty, Nicholson, Harrison. Anyway my view is that 1. The Powell period was not successful. 2. I do not accept the reason for that lack of success lands 100% on his door step. 3. Our recruitment has been patchy for a long time but Powell did land some quality players that are far better than any that Burgess has. 4. I wish I had given Powell the benefit of the doubt and backing when the players downed tools, after all we did FA in 2023 anyway under Chambers and we are back where we were now* just with a weaker squad. *Actually 3 wins less and 2 places lower in the table. | | | |
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| Wires71:BarbedWire2:
The point I was making re: discipline was cracking under pressure. There are penalties worth giving away, classic gamesmanship like slowing down the ruck when someone is on our line to recover and get into shape, or early set “six again” to stop momentum. The ones I object to are late set penalties where we’d done the hard work defending the set already, even worse giving away a penalty for late contact on a clearance kick. What do we stand to gain, it’s a non contested kick.
In response to the players that we lost but would have kept, Chris Hill tops the list. Best prop in the league last month and was in the England team in 2022 and 2023. Cooper, absolutely would have kept. Vaughan aside those two are head and shoulders better than any other prop we have or have had since. We completely botched the Wardle deal and Charnley is/was a really effective winger and was our top try scorer at the point too being scapegoated. Hindsight is wonderful isn’t it, Hill could have crumbled and retired after a few weeks at Huddersfield, so I don’t doubt the logic of losing player, more so the complete lack of logic in their replacements when Joe Bullock and Gil Dudson come in. Swapping £1 for 50p.
I agree on Joe Bullock and Gil Dudson. Terrible signings. But, in my opinion, you undermine your otherwise valid argument by being very selective, and unfairly balanced in your comparisons of incomings and outgoings during 2022 - 2023. One example being excluding Vaughan who came in who was more than an adequate replacement for Mike Cooper! A far superior player. Also listing Widdop, Hughes, Davis, Dean and Longstaff as regrettable exits whilst not even mentioning the replacements of Dufty, Nicholson, Harrison. Anyway my view is that 1. The Powell period was not successful. 2. I do not accept the reason for that lack of success lands 100% on his door step. 3. Our recruitment has been patchy for a long time but Powell did land some quality players that are far better than any that Burgess has. 4. I wish I had given Powell the benefit of the doubt and backing when the players downed tools, after all we did FA in 2023 anyway under Chambers and we are back where we were now* just with a weaker squad. *Actually 3 wins less and 2 places lower in the table. I could give you an argument for Widdop, Longstaff and Dean. Hughes, not so much and Davis not at all. But what we really swapped Cooper for was Amor, in 2022. The remit was to take the club the next step, not to sell it off for parts. I did, and still do, object to the handling of Dean and Longstaff, and if my kid had two contracts on the table, one with Powell’s Warrington, and the other with Sam’s Warrington, I know which one I’d hope him to sign. Don’t get me wrong, there was some good recruitment. But there should be even by dumb luck in a numbers game. Vaughan is exceptional, Dufty became exceptional last year. I don’t want to go round in circles, as I do appreciate that we are technically worse than 2023 here, but the top of this thread I did pose some context for what the directors could be considering right now, snd ultimately why Sam is still employed. The way I’ll leave this is that Sam has a job to do, he needs to get this team to perform the year out. There are positives in the way of youth players being given debuts and meaningful game time, positives that Dufty, Currie, Walker, Harrison… are noticeably better than when he arrived. Positives that he has reached 66% of all major finals available to him. But that’s not enough, the job is to lead this team, and to lead it well. He’s let himself down both at Vegas and with the ref moaning, and he should focus on things he can control like our defensive structure and attitude, not that of Jack Smith. | | | |
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