Cullen without we would have gone down.

Yes true but it doesn't fit the narrative that Plange delivered those crucial wins. Hull at the Boulevard being one. PC got us 4 points from 12 and was canonised.

I think Cullen was revered because he had given his all as a player and clearly loved the club as much as the fans did.

Darren Burns kept us up.

What kept us up in 2002?
Luckily, it was Salford being relegated, and Wakey being slightly worse than us (if memory serves me correctly, they walloped us on the last day, to ensure THEY stayed up)

We were truly awful in 2002.
My lowest point in my Wire watching history.

Hard to believe we flirted with relegation in 84/85 under Bowden, especially as we'd finished 3rd the season before, and also in 90/91, despite winning the Regal Trophy and being at Wembley, the previous season.
Scary times

For once I find myself agreeing with rubber duckie, and I think lefty and Wires71 are bang on as well. The idea that Cullen turned us round and saved us in 2002 is a bit of a myth. Cullen came in 6 games before the end of the season, we won 2 and lost 4. In the last 6 games under Plange we had also won 2 and lost 4, the two wins coming against the ultimately relegated Salford and that famous win at Leeds with a Briers drop goal.

Would we have stayed up if we'd have kept Plange? Who knows. My guess is, we would have limped over the line, because as lefty says, Salford were really poor that year. There were two results in games that we weren't involved with that really killed Salford. One was at Leeds, it was just after we'd won at Headingley. Leeds were strolling to a routine win and Salford out of nowhere pulled out a comeback to tie the game late on and Ryan Sheridan got a drop goal at the end that won it for Leeds. That would have been a kick in the guts for them. Then shortly after similar happened against Wakefield in a relegation 4 pointer at the Willows, Salford looked out of it then put on a late comeback and ended up drawing. But if I remember rightly, they should have won this one late on too, because they had a penalty near the Wakefield line and could have kicked the two points to win, but they decided to take a quick tap and knocked on straight from the tap!

Probably the most significant thing we did that season to ensure we survived wasn't the changing of coach but the signing of Nat Wood earlier on. We signed Westwood at the same time which would be one of the most significant signings ever but he wasn't decisive that year. Wood had been Wakefield's best player early on and bringing him in gave us a real competitor at halfback as well as disrupting a relegation rival. I think we had been trying to sign Neil Turley as our "big" signing to lift the squad, but he messed us around with contract demands. We were much better with Wood and Westwood so that was a blessing for us.

So for me, Cullen's big contribution for us wasn't performing a miracle to keep us up in 2002 I think we just limped home and were lucky that Salford were so bad.

Cullen did make a big contribution for us though - first, he got us to leave Wilderspool with dignity the next season. For a few years we'd been a club in perma-turmoil of some sort, and soft easy beats at home, and it would have been a sad way to go out if we'd had a season like that in 2003. Man City left Maine Road at that time as well, and their season petered out with lame duck performances at home which left Maine Road on a damp squib, but Cullen brought back a feelgood factor in 2003 and made the top 6 and changed our style of play to be more exciting, so we left Wilderspool in happy days and created a positivity about the move to the HJ.

The other big Cullen contribution was to change the general mindset to one of greater ambition. Before Cullen took over we were basically a club in mid-table mediocrity and we started every season thinking that making the lowest playoff spot would be a great achievement, and hoping for a good Challenge Cup draw that would mean we only needed to beat one good side to get to Wembley. By the time Cullen left we were thinking about winning trophies. Before Cullen came, a major signing for us would be a former international player aged 32 or over. The idea that we would be signing Adrian Morley or Matt King (or Andrew Johns for a few games) would be seen as a laugh. I know the finance for that was provided by Simon Moran and without him it wouldn't have happened so its not all down to Cullen but Cullen was an excellent frontman for Simon Moran's ambitions in those early years - he fully believed in the club's potential and was an articulate and persuasive person to sell the club's vision to new signings. He also raised the club's standing in the media and got on with Sky better than TS later did.

Cullen also got the club playing a better style of rugby than we had seen for years. In my years of watching Wire since the late 1980s, the Cullen era was the era in which we played the most expansive, exciting rugby. Even the peak TS years where we scored points all over the place were more about ruthless clinical finishing, it was the Cullen era where we were the entertainers. And through the mid summer of 2005, when we went on a long winning run, Cullen brought back the feeling of regular winning - rather than inconsistency - that we had not had since 1993/94.

So I definitely salute Cullen's contribution to the club as a coach as well as a player, but don't think he was decisive in 2002.