2006, Wigan were bottom for the majority of the season. 4 years later they became champions.

Simon Moran has been a big help for Warrington, particularly in paying for transfer fees for Richie Myler, Ryan Atkins, Vinnie Anderson, Simon Grix, Martin Gleeson, Garreth Carvell, Nathan Wood and Ben Westwood at a time when other clubs cannot afford transfer fees.

It's also worth remembering that Warrington are a profitable club anyway thanks to sound commercial knowhow at the club, which is exploiting the stadium to its full capacity both at matches and elsewhere. The ability to own our own stadium is crucial to this, and was a result of sustained pressure from the local community over a number of years, a good model for all clubs.

As for talk of the salary cap, Warrington have never been in breach of the cap as everyone knows. This could be because there is a big conspiracy whereby Warrington pay all their players in secret and nobody reveals anything, or it could be because the club is well run. Looking at the squad and comparing it to the likes of Wigan, Leeds and Hull then it doesn't seem unreasonable that the squads are paid at similar aggregate levels.

There will be some predictable willy waving on this thread.

I think Warrington have been changing for around 15 years, Peter Deakin started it all off and then the building of a new stadium, Simon Moran and the recruitment of Tony Smith have all followed.

It matters not how or when, its good for our game and I hope we soon see Hull FC (next most likely) challenging cosistantly followed by A N Other club soon after.

Simon Moran joined the board in 1998.

Big well done to the wire, big increase in attendances worth a mention to. They have sold out a few times this season if I am not mistaken. still cant stand that westwood though.

Hull are the club that should be making breakthroughs for me. Brilliant venue, profitable on the whole I believe and loads of local talent to mop up. I think they've been a decent coach away from glory and the opportunity the missed when they reached the top in the naughties was glaring. Had they appointed Tony Smith at that time they could be a SL giant by now.

Theoretically team's dominance at the top of the league should be very difficult to maintain. Warrington are at the top now, but what happens when all their players contracts come up for expiry? They will all want increases, premium deals for premium players. It's not impossible, particularly for a club like Wigan with it's youth production line, but it's going to get harder to continually dominate.

Also worth noting that Tony Smith coaches/has coached 2 of the top 4, turning Hudds around from relegation and progressing Wire to the top, and took the previous champions to back to back titles... Not a bad record.

He didn't win back to back titles at Leeds. He left after the first of three-in-a-row to coach England full time.

People often quote the sugar daddy thing in efforts to downplay the efforts of the club. There are quite a few clubs with rich backers, you still need to do all the right things, have the right staff, put the right processes in placem, which is easier said than done!

Quins have a sugar daddy, they're doing well aren't they?

Wire have a brilliant youth squad so i'm not even worried about the future either.

i've got no problems with warrington as a club, they are league winners for a reason, they have a superb coach, some of the top players in the competition and no doubt the best backroom staff, how they accrued them or pay them is of little relevance.
however it's not quite all rags to riches stuff as for the best part of 4/5 years sky have been bigging them up for glory, this year they have found the right combinations to unlock that treasure chest, they have also won 2 cup finals in the last 3 years.what im saying is yes their rise has been gradual but not as unexpected as people might think, lets not forget that they have underperformed quite a bit over the last few seasons too.
while we are on the subject, even though we have no trophies to show for it, our rise from perennial whipping boys to play off regulars and occasional cup finals is also worth noting, yes we are fortunate in that we have ken davy but we have also worked extremely hard to get where we are now.

so well done to warrington,its nice to see a different name at the top after years of domination by so few.