Every year we go through this silly game of pretending our squad is "man for man, better than Saints/Wigan", with the number of "England internationals" brought up (how many of them have actually been successful at international level? that's a more telling measure). We extend various players' contracts to baying applause from the sheep on here about how we're set up for success in the future, and talk like we're within touching distance of being a Grand Final team and only need the right coach.

Also every year, we have a few moments of clarity, usually when we lose a big game, where someone brings a reality check to the forum (usually lefty) and in the aftermath of the defeat, people will read it and think "he's not wrong you know".

We have a squad full of senior players who are not leaders, they play well when things are going well but when things go against us, a lot of them go anonymous together. Too many of our players are bigger "names" than they are performers, which brings me back to the whole "England internationals" argument. It's not a squad set up to win the Grand Final. I'm not saying you'd need to do a total overhaul, we could win a Grand Final with some of these guys in the team, but we need to get much better at recruitment - find the diamonds in the rough, players who are going to play better with us than they have done with their former clubs, rather than "England internationals" whose careers have plateaued or are in slow decline.

The one cause for hope I have is Powell, if we let him have significant influence over recruitment. I posted once before about the Leeds side he took over from Dean Lance and the moves he made to reshape that squad between 2001 and 2003. It is really instructive if you look at the guys who he moved on and the guys he brought in. Leeds under Lance had a lot of the same type of players that current Wire do. Also his first four years at Cas between 2013 and 2017...when you look at that squad that dominated the league season and reached the GF in 2017 (playing outstanding rugby), it featured players who weren't really seen as big names a few years before, he improved players that were already there and he brought in the right type of players who fit the type of rugby he wanted to play.

Powell will come in as an outsider without history and loyalty to these players and he doesn't seem like the type to be impressed by bullpoopers or go doing false hype fluff pieces for the Warrington Guardian about how fantastic our squad is to sell season tickets, he will see the players for what they are, as he did when he coached against them.

But taking Cooper and Hill out of the pool, of the rest only Mulhearn is currently offering any go-forward.

Philbin has flatlined a little, Butler is a work in progress and Akuola is well, lacking in stamina to be polite.

However, I do think Powell will already be looking at the squad with objective, dispassionate eyes and seeing where the gaps and weaknesses are, and has probably identified far more than us.

Don't forget Powell won nothing at Leeds, and he's still won nothing significant at Cas (this may change soon if the 'S' choke). It was only really in 2003 under Powell that Leeds looked like they could be contenders, but even then we were way off, and lost 5 times in a season to the Bulls. Powell was okay for us but I don't buy into the conspiracy theory that he built Tony Smith's team. Smith added Bai, Lauitiiti and gave the team the x-factor that had been missing for 32 years.

Don't get me wrong, I think Powell has worked wonders at Cas, and I'd rather he came back to Leeds instead of who we have now. But he wasn't the super coach at Leeds that some make him out to be. If anything he repaired the damage of the Lance years, but as a recruiter the real stand out was Graham Murray (RIP), who preceded Lance.

Fair points, I do think that Powell is a better coach now than he was at Leeds though. Got to respect him for stepping down to fev after that dissapontment and continuing his coaching development. FWIW Tony Smith finished the job and others are involved behind the scenes but Powell was definitely a part of that journey.

I think it's a great fit for us really, his attitude towards entertaining rugby is right and his reputation as a coach that hasn't won anything should make his as hungry for success as we are.

I think Powell and the Cas team will win this year`s Challenge Cup.

I certainly hope so. Its an unfair stick to beat him with really with all due respect to cas, what he has done there is great. They have mixed it with the serious winners on lower budget with smaller squads.