One could argue Smith taking us into the bottom 4 playoffs with championship sides was pretty rank.

Price was great in his 1st year, and a complete failure in his following three.  He has never been a head coach since. 

I think it could be argued that we have had several occasions of "downed tools " for quite a while. The Last Days of Smith,  and Price in 2019 when we beat Saints at Wembley ,we were rubbish before & after ,playing some poor rugby. And , it was the players  including Powell's additions that made his job impossible.

Smith, absolutely. He missed the play offs (direct equivalent) and ultimately there was no green shoot of recovery in that team. He paid for it with his job. 

Price’s ‘failure’ compared to what had come since actually doesn’t look too bad. I’m not advocating for him, and wouldn’t  want him back, but from where we were on season debrief of 2021, to where we were at debrief of 2022, proved the point really. We had tantrums about being knocked out at home against Hull Kr in the playoffs, and relied on scraping past Toulouse to remain in the top flight.


While this season hasn’t been good enough, and it’s not, we can’t judge former seasons differently because the coach got Cas to a grand final a few years ago and stopped Mike Cooper selling T-shirts. 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. 

Good to see the academy beating Leeds yesterday, unbeaten and top of the league - reserves also doing well. There’s a lot that needs fixing, but fundamentally if we can sort out senior recruitment and, and replace burgess well when the time comes, we’ll be in a good spot I think. Recruitment manager to work under Chambers?

Funny how we are now discussing how we're not as bad as we have been, rather than trying to figure out how we can become as good as we possibly can be....


Being a Warrington fan sucks, and I've been there for over 50 years now. Thank goodness my mate still goes to the game, otherwise I'm not sure I'd bother any more tbh

Fair points. The Powell period was a failure - no argument from me. Im just not sure that equates to Powell is a poor coach and it was all his fault. I think he had an impossible job and lets face it we have been rank now under 4 different coaches. In fact it was only for a limited period under Smith and one year of Price that we were anything like contenders in the last 20 years.  




Now, if you are an advocate of judging seasons the same and not differently without past influence then you must compare the league performance of Warrington in 2025 with the league performance in 2023 which got Powell the sack. As I have said, we are worse this year than 2023 by every metric (wins/position/points difference) but you give Burgess a pass and focus on how bad Powell was.