All a bit Dickensian.

Interesting comments from Charnley on the recent Out of your league podcast.
He said that his spell with us was generally good (under Price) and that the team had a really good bond and togetherness just like they had when he was at Wigan. He said we just fell shorts a couple of times with daft mistake ala 2018 grand final. He didn't mention anything about problems in the camp.
One interesting snippet he mentioned was that the training was slightly tougher at Wigan and that could have been a contributing factor in coming up short in big games.
The discussion around his departure to Leigh was rather vague only commenting that he got banned and fell out of favour with Powell and then they didn't quite see eye to eye after that.
I feel that there are some big question marks over Powell especially with the way Charnley is playing for Leigh this season. Are players like Charnley really bad apples? i'm having my doubts now.
We have certainly been downgraded with Russell or Minikin. I know we sometimes play Thewliss on the wing but he is really a FB.

I don't feel we played to Charnley's strengths when Price was in charge. Tbh we're not the greatest at set plays or moving the ball with 30 meters of the opposition line and haven't been for years.

One thing that always irked me about Charnley was his laughing and joking on the pitch with opposition players after a galling defeat. Not many did it but he certainly stood out.

Well we should sign Davis from Catalan and move Thewlis to FB next season.

You are really believing Charnley's rewriting of history?

So we were a good bunch, all playing for each other, when he was here under Price? - Is this the bunch that crashed out of the play offs in 3 consecutive seasons in totally miserable fashion, with, after each exit, fans demanding Price's removal and the removal of many of the squad along with him?

You have to take these type of stories with a huge pinch of salt. What he probably means is that they were one huge clique, who enjoyed the comfort zone of constant failure and who were happy picking up a wage while underachieving and little threat to their roles in the side - A new coach turned up and proceeded to upset their clique, as they knew many of them would be found out as the underachieving bunch they were.

Powell isn't perfect, not by a very long way, but let's not pretend the era Charnley was here was all roses. He was part of a highly regarded squad which consistently found ways to fail in a miserable fashion - Good on Charnley for managing to revive his career with Leigh, but let's not pretend he's some misunderstood good guy, who deserved some special treatment off the new regime. I have no doubt he (& all the others who have left recently) could have still been here had he showed the right attitude to Powell, but it's obvious he, and the others, chose not to.

Charnley had other personal things going on, it wasn’t just eye to eye.
The club helped Charnley by paying his full contract out early in away to financially help him out while dealing with things.
In the end, those things turned out nice for him.

Errm we got knocked out of the playoffs as follows

2019 Warrington 12-14 Castleford 14
2020 Warrington 14-27 Hull FC
2021 Warrington 0 - 19 Hull KR

Grand Final/CC RU followed by 3 play off qualifications (home tie) with a CC win thrown in. I agree it isn’t good enough but it’s a lot better than 11th, out first round of the cup followed by out of the cup second round against 12 men and highly likely finishing out of the top 6 again.

Things were far from rosy under Price (and dire rugby) but compared to the current car crash it was rugby heaven.

I dream of being knocked out of these so called play-offs first round

Prices reign wasnt good enough.
Powells reign currently isnt good enough.

My post was to point out that we should be wary of looking back with rose tinted spectacles as others have alluded to.

Hard Times seems rather apt.

Price was good for about a season and a third.

I give him credit for his first year, considering how bad we were in 2017. Two finals, knocking a supposedly unstoppable Saints out of the playoffs, was a good effort. He brought resilience to the team and made us look more organised in defence than we had been for a while.

The next year started off well when Blake Austin was running hot. Once he went off the boil things started to fall apart, and quickly. The league had worked us out and we had no Plan B, we were prone to collapsing in games and going on long losing runs. The quality of rugby became dire. And it was basically like that for the rest of Price's time in charge, 2 and two thirds seasons when we were rubbish.

The only time we ever saw that resilience and organisation from the first season again was in the Challenge Cup final. To give Price and that side their credit, that was the most significant performance in my lifetime as a Wire supporter when you take into account the occasion and the opposition. They achieved greatness for one half of rugby when Saints threw the kitchen sink at them and there was no getting through.

But what was really telling about the Price era was how even that high point did not stem the growing discontent for long. A few months later when we went out of the playoffs the mood on this forum was really bad, lots of fans wanted him out already despite winning the Challenge Cup a few months earlier.

So why was there so much negativity about Price by the end of 2019? I think it was because there was a crushing inevitability about what was going to happen for the rest of his time in charge. You could see we were a busted flush, teams had worked us out and it was just going to be the same until we parted company with him. The rugby was so uninspiring and dull, it sucked the life out of the fanbase. It didn't help that this was the era when Fitzpatrick was in peak -talking mode, making big statements to the press about how only the Super League title was acceptable and we wanted to be one of the biggest brands in global sport and doing wind-ups of other clubs which always backfired on us.

In the later years under previous coaches the fan base had been split, there had been Cullen loyalists and TS loyalists but there were no Price loyalists. There were a few who were slower to call for him to leave than others but you never had the divisive arguments on this forum with some people being loyal to the coach. The Price era had one huge highlight but was largely one of the most forgettable dismal spells in Wire history.

That said, it was better than the Powell era.

So what happened between Charnley and Powell.
Was Charnley one of the bad eggs or is Powell's ego just that big.
Charnley's First 4 games. He scored 2 tries each game.
8 tries. 2nd most after Ashton with 13 after the full season was completed.
So what happened between the saints and Wakefield league match Charnley didn't play to the challenge Cup match. Charnley didn't score another try for Warrington that season and played 6 more matches. Winning 2 of them in that time.

Again. What did mike cooper do? Warrington born lad, one of the best forwards we've ever had. Hard runner. Win percentage generally in the 60%+ range when he played for us. suddenly considered a bad egg. Because he was also concentrating on his next phase of his career after he retired. Something Fitzpatrick Condoned and encouraged as we all know rugby players careers are done generally before they hit 40. so need that second income.

What is clear to me. I said it at the time, (maybe not on here) We didn't need a full clear out. We just needed someone who could give us a mentality change to be more ruthless in knockout rugby. The players we had at our disposal was in the previous 4 years achieved play off rugby. (Steve Price's reign) In which were
4 Playoff appearances.
2018. A Runners Up Spot,
2019. We did limp home to be fair before crashing out to Castleford.
2020. A semi Final spot. (we lost out on Preliminary final's by 113 Points difference to saints) Hull FC were a lot fresher due to 2 weeks Prep.
2021. We just didn't play well on the day.

We just needed that mental switch that Wigan and saints have for playoff rugby. Something we lost after the grand final heartaches of 2012, 2013 and 2016 where things turned mid game to go against us in each of them.

Steve Price's problem was Getting the team in the mental state to go out and Win. We saw great wins against Wigan, Saints, Leeds and Catalans. throughout his tenure... But lose stupidly to teams like Hull KR and Cas and Wakefield by 2 -9 points when we should have seen them off easier than we should and lost as as a result...

Did we really need the clear-out we saw in 2022, which again sees us in a similar situation 12 months later with the situation we see ourselves in now???

We will never know for sure but werent there stories of some players needing to leave training early to run their businesses? Some that wanted to take their pets to training? Some players a little big for their boots as demonstrated here ... https://twitter.com/i/status/1401418424983584772

We will never know for sure but werent there stories of some players needing to leave training early to run their businesses? Some that wanted to take their pets to training? Some players a little big for their boots as demonstrated here ... https://twitter.com/i/status/1401418424983584772

.... wouldn't even make a top 10, probably struggle to make a top 20...

Worse than dismal - sums it up really and people (including the board) still want him to continue. Sheesh!