Good and bad points as you might expect from a young inexperienced coach. Consistency is the main issue along with recruitment. On the credit side I think he does get more out of the players than Price or Powell probably on the back of his reputation and persona. Our record against St Helens and general performance in 2024 is evidence enough. 
Upgrading the Academy at last is clearly the best way forward but it won’t work with recruitment mistakes. Sneyd and Yates are good experienced professionals and a couple of good overseas recruits would have made us serious challengers. You would have thought that Burgess would have been in a position to know young and established players in Australia but he couldn’t manage it. Musgrove had previous which he must have known about and to choose him over Ese’Ese is a shocker. 
In defence, no team can maintain form with the number of long term injuries to key players - Wigan slumped last year without Field and French.
Whenever he leaves it’s Paul Rowley for me - good record, gets the best out of players and plenty of experience. 
One thing for sure, we can’t afford recruitment mistakes for 2026.

I don't think Rowley is the answer. What's he ever won? 

When did Wigan slump in 2024?  I see they lost back to back games in July (Hull Away then Wire home) after winning eight on the bounce, then after these losses won eight out of nine?  

I wish we could slump like that.  

Might have been 2023.

Rowley has coached Leigh, Toulouse and Salford. What has Willie Peters ever won ? You could have said the same about Matt Peet.

The appointment always had a short-term feeling to it. Either it would go well and he'd get an NRL job after a couple of years, or it would flame out and we'd be looking to move on. 

There were some reasons why you could justify taking a punt on Burgess. He's a very driven individual with high standards. He was a great player and a legend in Australia where he dominated the best league in the world for a decade. One of the problems we had was an unruly dressing room where players didn't seem to respect Price or Powell, but the generation of today's players have grown up seeing Burgess as a superstar so there was no doubt he would command respect from day one. He's a winner and leader which is something we've lacked. 


There were two big downsides. One is his short coaching apprenticeship. He was a first time head coach who would be making his mistakes in real time with us. The other is he tends to bring chaos with him. You could see that from his time in Australia and also in rugby union. He ruffles feathers and falls out with people. There are two sides to every story so I don't take at face value what was said about him by certain people in England RU, or South Sydney, or his ex wife or how the media reported that case. But some people just attract controversy and conflict and I'm not sure that's what you want in a head coach of a team. 


But the choice of coach disguises a bigger problem. Our recruitment has been poor for a long time. Do we honestly think we'd be where Hull KR are if we had appointed Willie Peters? This is not due to one coach it has spanned multiple coaches. At the end of the Price era it was clear the squad needed a major overhaul and Powell was brought in to oversee a clear out. That was the right decision but we managed to put together a much weaker squad than Price had had which meant Powell and now Burgess were massively handicapped. 

Sally you have nailed the coaching appointment of Sam Burgess by Warrington thereAs an outsider looking in
I'm a massive fan of Sam the player by the way too.


Sam clearly had a very good first season coaching at the Wolves.
But has he got the nous to build a successful squad rather just motivating the squad that he has inherited?


At present his skillset looks far more likely to be successful by coaching England in a 3 game series,Rather than actually building a squad capable of winning a GF at Warrington 

I’ve never said this, ever. But, I think we could win it this year. I’m likely wrong, I’m likely going to be a laughing stock for this post, but… when we need it, when we really need it, there’s a steel and a determination about this team. And that might not be Sam, it might be the players themselves, but I genuinely think that if we can sneak in the 6, we could just find a way. 


What I can say of Sam, evidentially, is this the has got players 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 15, 17, 18… the same as his predecessor, and one team was an abject failure and one is disappointingly underperforming. There is a difference in there. 

I keep seeing this bouncing about on here and facebook that we chose Musgrove over Ese'ese.We didn't at all, we were in for Ese'ese as were a few other clubs, but he chose to sign for Hull.
We signed Musgrove 2-3 months AFTER Ese'ese signed with Hull.

That's a good shout - in an international series he could come in with the status and aura to work with the best players in the game and help elevate the culture to be one of winning. Like the Aussies do with State of Origin - its working with the best players in the game for short periods so they bring in guys like Daley, Fittler, Meninga, Slater who have that standing in the game. 


Building a winning team in a club competition is hard and requires a winning set up that goes beyond the coach, and also probably requires a coach to have gained experience and made mistakes before they are thrust into the spotlight. Sometimes its through a lengthy apprenticeship at a winning team like Wigan did with Wane and Peet, or like Leeds did with guys like Tony Smith and Brian McDermott who were battle scarred from tough spells at Hudds and London. In both cases those guys took over with more experience and inherited a club with a set up that helped them succeed - great young players, great recruitment. 


Burgess got dropped into a much harder situation with us - a club with high profile and expectations but where there were a lot of problems, a squad that had recently been overhauled but to be honest needed another rebuild, but now he had to deal with all the contracts brought in under the old regime. And this was his first time as head coach. 


The curse of a great player is they get their coaching opportunities too early because of their name and reputation then things go wrong early on and they spend the rest of their career trying to get over that stain on their CV. Guys who were lesser names as a player have to build themselves up before they get their big opportunity but they are much better prepared to take it on when they get it. 

I admire your belief. If there is a steel it is highly selective. It didnt show itself in the CC final, Vegas or Wakefield x 2, or Hull FC at home.