Got to let it go. If we could have kicked a goal, or concentrated and stopped a barge over from the play the ball. It was in our hands and we blew it, admittedly with no help from the ref.

Exact mentality that sums up Warrington and why they still haven't won a grand final or even got there since 2018.

Wesley Bruines has been released the club decided not to take up the option to extend. Jake Thewlis as had the option on him taken up to extend

Is anyone else a bit underwhelmed by our recruitment so far? The 3 signed already are just squad fillers / projects ( no disrespect)
I know we have a lot of good youth coming through such as Hayes, Lindop, Holroyd, Wood, Taylor Wray etc but i still believe we need to strengthen on top. Unless the plan is to just have another experimental / building year whereby we see if these youngsters are good enough. As i expect them to feature more. To me i like the ‘next man up’ mentality and am happy with another year of building but i also don’t want to get left behind because we are sat on lots of free cap space. St Helens found this out the hard way recently by not recruiting and pinning success on the youngsters. Albeit there youngsters haven’t cut the mustard so far where as our look more promising.

Supposedly our only signing for next year was going to be yates prior to the nicholson news.

We've already had him, and arguably he isn't enough.

If we were trying to sign Cleary that would indicate we have quite a bit of cap space spare.

Not necessarily loads as only 150k would count on the cap, so not neccessarily shed loads of cap space. Maybe Cleary and 2 more signings really. But with who we have signed i think we still have cap space for another 1 at best.
But yeah i'm a bit underwhelmed, BUT we have the nucleus of the squad set and good enough to get to the playoffs. I think Leyland is a genuine step up from Drinkwater, and Hayes has room to get better also.
Russell i hope just had a dodgy game for PNG, and a full pre-season and some game time will kick him in to gear, as he's a big dude so could add some strike for us.
I would have liked a new big boy prop, but it looks like Bullock will have to find his early 2023 form and fill that spot.
Our new painter and decorator is only a development signing anyway so i'm not concerned with his signing for the first team, He might get a game or 2 on the wing or not.
We might be banking any cap space we have left incase a player becomes available during the season?

Only £150k is that a marquee signing? You make fair points but I must admit when I read "we have the nucleus of the squad set and good enough to get to the playoffs" I was underwhelmed. Our target is to win the title surely?

Generally underwhelmed yes, although as FMC rightly points out, we should remember that Yates is actually a 2025 signing who we managed to get in early. In terms of how our recruitment will be viewed, much rests on how good, or not, Russell turns out to be.

If Russell does turn-out to be a dud there is the option of returning Currie to the 2nd row and playing Yates at loose forward.

It`s not something that I am advocating for, but in my opinion Yates is a better 13 than prop and we have quite a few middles to cover his absence there.

Yates may be a better 13 than a prop but I am not convinced he is a better 13 than Currie.

Yes, I agree with you, but if Russell doesn`t make the grade, it`s an option to move Yates to 13.

But hopefully Burgess knows what he is doing & Russell surprises us all by taking the chance that he has been given.

Yeah he'd have to be a marquee player


What i ment is we already have a squad in place to get us there, so i'm not underwhelmed with the current squad. Dan Russell potentially has the size and experience to outshine Nicholson under the influence of Burgess, so does Leyland, and if we get Bullock back to his best, we're actually stronger than this year

There is a hard hitting decent prop inside Bullock somewhere. But at 31 and more clubs than Tiger Woods, he needs to find it soon.

Currie wasn't as good as people made out this year, he was better than previous currie which was a nice surprise but i'd say he was ineffective in a lot more

I reckon you probably get about the same in terms of link play from yates, but with better defence and hit ups. plus two regular props

infact, its been quite surprising that the more critical posters on here have been so easy on him for parts of this season

Interesting article in the [urlhttps://www.warringtonguardian.co.uk/sport/24646971.warrington-wolves-hardest-working-player-2024/[/url ranking our players by the NRL VB Hard Earned Index.

Warrington Wolves ‘Hard Earned’ leaderboard 2024

Luke Yates – 1,324 (inc time at Hudds)

Ben Currie – 1,212

George Williams – 1,151

Matt Dufty – 1,012

Paul Vaughan – 1,001

My guess is that we've had lots less posters & less critical posts this season. Probably to do with winning more games.

He has been better this year than 2023. Looked more involved and committed. I don't think any forward came out of 2023 looking great.

I do maintain that 3 years was one hell of a contract extension though.

Thanks for this. I really like Luke Yates and think every pack needs a work horse like him.

Interesting stats but they’re based on total number of performance's rather than prorated. If you look it appears that Crowther and Holroyd are way down on effort which we know isn’t the case.

Nevertheless Yates and Currie have been very industrious.

I’ve always been a fan of Currie.
It’s no coincidence the episodes of his career that stagnated was where we weren’t so healthy in the front row or just plane bang average.

Currie was brilliant the start of the year but not as effective in the second half.
But still a marked improvement on the past few years and he's put a lot of work in. I've been happy with him this year all in all, Nicholson is another who seems to be overrated by most. He's not a bad player by any means, but people seem to rate his performances much higher than actuality.
I'd argue Holroyd has been more effective than Nicholson in the games he played this year. He's not as big a loss as people are making out.

Holroyd puts on a bit of beef and then I’d say he’ll outshine Nicholson. His defence is excellent, engine is superb and he has a great eye for the line.

Moving on to Toby. Do you think we will give him an extension? His contract is up Nov 2025.