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.

Good post as usual.

Regarding the highlighted point, this season anyway, the team spirit appeared to be strong up until the Mcguire thing. I don't know the ins and outs of this bar an apparent split in the camp, but this would surely have been outside of Powell's control.

It hasn't obviously worked for Powell but I do feel for him a bit as the cards have been stacked against him since arriving (though he knew they would be) and that Mcguire scenario completely dashed any prospect of building on our early strong start.

How is the new coach going to resolve the split in the camp? It looks like Powell didn't have the interpersonal skills to sort this and if it isn't sorted, then we aren't going to go anywhere with this side.

My take on it is that Powell just wasn’t up to the job. His (limited) success at Cas was based on building a team from players that he had “rescued” and they owed him a huge amount of personal loyalty which he reciprocated. At Wire he was dealing with players with totally different motivations (both from him and each other) and he did not have the skills to meld them together. So while things briefly went well all was good but at the first sign of inter camp problems he didn’t know what to do.
Middletown’s interview in the WG makes it clear that Powell was given carte Blanche to get rid of players and recruit new ones. So the players he was slagging off in his final interview were players he chose and he wanted.
Now we can criticise the club for giving him that power but there was a very strong feeling on here that player recruitment should come from the coach not the CEO. So if we wanted that how can we then criticise?
I now don’t buy the “bad apple” excuse re Cooper and Charnley. I suspect they saw the Emperor’s new clothes for what they were. These were highly experienced senior professionals with international experience, coached by any number of coaches with never a hint of being a problem.
So we are back to square 1 if not worse and much of that is down to Powell. Not too much sympathy from me I’m afraid.

We did and we won games with many starting forwards missing.

The McGuire issue must have been handled poorly but I don't think that's an excuse for players not putting in effort when they pull on the jersey.

Couldn't agree more. There's a fair few posts intimating their sympathy for Powell. Truth is he was tosh as our coach, numbers/results speak for themselves. This bloke nearly got us relegated and has now taken us from 1st to hanging on to 6th in a matter of weeks.

As the head coach of Warrington, he failed and has rightly been relieved of his duties IMO.

I know nothing about dressing room culture, his persona or his coaching style, i wish him no ill will as a human being.
. I do know that on a match day I've seen us collapse on many occasions under his guidance both this season and for the majority of last season. Good riddance.

From when Powell was announced to be coming to us, i told anyone who'd listen it's not an exciting appointment. It was a sideways move from Price in my opinion, and not ambitious enough. Wane was the way i hoped we'd go (if he would entertain Warrington, due to it not being Wigan). That would've been a statement of intent and fueled expectancy. Were it not for Hardaker, i think there's a good chance that Powell may've led Cas to a Grand Final win - although even with that, i still feel it was a performance not too far off Leicester City winning the PL in 2015/16 - a bit of an overachieving flash in the pan.
At the time - Cas played great, exciting rugby which was great to watch and the kind we, at Wire haven't had since peak Smith days. I hoped we were getting that with Powell. I attended the fans forum at the start of last season still very skeptical about Powell's appointment, but left feeling not as skeptical - he does talk a good game. We all know how last season went, so no point dredging that up, but the start of this season showed more promise. Then it all fell apart.
We've been through "5 drives and a kick to Toby King" and after the first 8 this year we got "5 drives up the middle and then...??" every set, every game. No ideas other than hoping for an Ashton intercept. The Wigan Challenge Cup game shown that; playing the majority of the game with 12 men, and yet can't get force an overlap. Still driving it up the middle, where it doesn't make your extra man count. The writing was already on the wall before that, but now it was being written with a Sharpie. Like others on here, i echo that Powell seemed like a good man, but i think he was the wrong coach at the wrong time. Ultimately, i think his 18 months with us will be looked on as a disaster.
I feel that we're at that point now in the season where we're in a bit of limbo. If we can't get the coach we want in now, is it Chambers until the end of the season until we can appoint for start of 24? If so, do the players' regress into the "supply teacher" mindset? Or do we get someone in now who maybe isn't who would be right, but simply who's available and possibly more mediocrity for the next 12-18 months?
All I can say is that I'm glad that it's not my decision. I just want to see us playing well - i can take getting beat, if we put effort in...like Saints at home a few weeks ago.
For the record; Holbrook is my choice - comes with a reputation of being able to do it in Super League and i think (hope) players will respect that.

Does anyone think we’ll get a bounce with this set of players or will they get even lazier with the supply teacher in? I’m worried for Friday.