It's going to require a bigger change than head and assistant coach. We tried that 18 months ago.

I really wanted Powell to succeed and got swept up in it earlier in the year when we went on that run. I'm sad that we are having to start again and none of the potential candidates excite me very much.

The thing that really upset me about Powell was his treatment of young players. Players in positions where we had limited depth chucked out on loan, and young lads making their first appearances seemingly the scapegoats for any defeat - while duffers like Dudson and Matautia seemed to have endless chances.

Our honours board of Yorkshire coaches is graced by Plange, Lowes and now Powell. Not a happy hunting ground.

Powell got found out Big Time

Just couldn’t hold his Ale at the weekly Booze Ups

Became untenable

If you saw my post I said that” All I can say is Wakey is a very big game, a very big game!”
The quote came straight from a director.

Powell knew he had to win the game to finish the season with pay.

He’d me thinking he was Jigsaw from the SAW movies.

Re: Player grievances. We have a player welfare manager in Kylie Leuluai don’t we? He reports to Karl. It’s not like players couldn’t get past Powell in some sort of blatant autocracy.

Unfortunately I feel these apparent problems are not causes of the club’s current state, but that they are symptoms. I think we have a well-intended but laissez-fair and complacent culture. We need a competent and no-nonsense CEO (someone in the character mould of Powell ironically) along with a director of rugby and a modern objective thinker of a coach. Whether we can find any (let alone all three) in the current RL market is extremely unlikely.

I don’t feel confident about the near future at all, and feel we are about to repeat the same old cycle.

The next coaching appointment is massive, we can’t afford to rush it or get it wrong. I don’t think Powell is as strong a character as his gruff exterior portrays, quite the opposite and I believe Holbrook is a lot tougher than he comes across. We will certainly stabilise and improve under Holbrook and I’m not sure Holbrook will stand for any tinkering in his plans.

If we get Holbrook and STILL have the issues with attitude, flaky performances, and petulant players then we will know that we are truly beyond help.

The idea of a bad dressing room culture has been around in Wire for a while now.

In the DVDV era, we had a "spice boys" culture, players out in Mr Smiths, stories of shenanigans in pre season tours to Lanzarote. The senior players, especially the overseas signings, seemed to be driving this, which makes it very difficult for a coach to control.

Cullen had to deal with some of that as well. I remember during lockdown he did that podcast with Wood and Higham where he talked about his time as coach and having to compromise with the dressing room culture because a couple of the key players who he needed onside were the ones at the heart of it.

In the early years of TS that seemed to have cleaned up. Probably because the players we had were much more professional. We had senior players like Morley, Hodgson, Monaghan setting the tone.

Towards the end of TS's time though you could sense the dressing room was becoming harder to police. Early in his last season there were lots of stories on here about some of the young players directly confronting TS and whilst we don't know if those stories were true, it definitely seemed like those players had their "supporters" on here updating us with lots of gossip from inside the dressing room to stir up support for their cause.

The team seemed to be more together for a while under Price but I wonder if that was because Price indulged them a bit. The clip of Cooper jostling him was an eye opener, even if we want to brush it under the carpet as "its just his competitive edge"...I can't imagine any Leeds player doing that to Brian McDermott or Wigan player doing that to Wane.

Then Powell came in and last year clearly clashed with a lot of players who didn't approve of his methods - which is fair enough when you're here to change a culture. But the fact that we brought in a new crop of players who now have their own grievances is very disappointing.

It's a long term problem that the club needs to get on top of. I think they need to be much better at making decisions on new recruits based on character and professionalism.

All this talk of dressing room unrest, player welfare and split dressing rooms makes me nostalgic for the good old days when they'd sort their grievances in Time Square mediated by Mr Greenalls.

Our team meetings of late must resemble group therapy Tuesday at The Priory.

The thing is, I thought the same thing when we brought in Powell. I don't think Holbrook will change anything on his own, he'll just be the next scapegoat.

Of course, the likelihood is that Holbrook won't even be coming. It's a mess, and I think poor Chambers will be Plange Mk.2.

Quote: sally cinnamon " It's a long term problem that the club needs to get on top of. I think they need to be much better at making decisions on new recruits based on character and professionalism.'" We've already got that nailed haven't we? Quote: sally cinnamon "He insisted May 2023. https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/22253759 ... y-england/

Quote: sally cinnamon " It's a long term problem that the club needs to get on top of. I think they need to be much better at making decisions on new recruits based on character and professionalism.'" We've already got that nailed haven't we? Quote: sally cinnamon "He insisted May 2023. https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/22253759 ... y-england/

Totally agree about the players, I don't think Powell is a bad coach at all though, just not the right one to fix the mess that we as a club were/ are in.

I hope he gets another club and does well there, no hard feelings from me. He did his best, just wasn't a match the board let it go on for too long which is unfortunate.

We’ve already spoken with Holbrook near 3 weeks ago.
As I’ve touched on already. We had spoken with DP about parting ways.

He was always going to go today if we got beat, however DP accelerated it with the post match interview.
He knew he was gone.

Stuart Middleton left for Aus to speak to Halbrook before maybe loosing him to Newcastle.

Quote: CW8 "Totally agree about the players, I don't think Powell is a bad coach at all though, just not the right one to fix the mess that we as a club were/ are in. I hope he gets another club and does well there, no hard feelings from me. He did his best, just wasn't a match the board let it go on for too long which is unfortunate.'" Completely agree. Watching that press conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPA-GbVGl0M was painful. The bloke looks completely frazzled.

Quote: CW8 "Totally agree about the players, I don't think Powell is a bad coach at all though, just not the right one to fix the mess that we as a club were/ are in. I hope he gets another club and does well there, no hard feelings from me. He did his best, just wasn't a match the board let it go on for too long which is unfortunate.'" Completely agree. Watching that press conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPA-GbVGl0M was painful. The bloke looks completely frazzled.