One huge problem with Lowes, from the outset, is that he was a part of the Cullen regime that was ultimately deemed not good enough to take Warrington to the allegedly achievable 'next level'.

As assistant to Cullen, he was obviously associated with the underachievement of the side. On being given the coach's job himself, it is surely unsurprising that he has felt the need to develop his own way of doing things in order to distance himself from what had gone before.

I had hopes that this might be a positive move - sadly, what we have seen is that the team are performing even less effectively than under Cullen. If there are the problems within the squad that have been widely mentioned, then the board are surely culpable for failing to recognise that merely promoting a member of the existing staff would be extremely unlikely to sort this out. You can’t suddenly say ‘you can’t do this or that anymore’, with any degree of believability, when you were standing round watching it happen in the first place.

If I'm doing me sums right the Leeds game is the only game Lowes has won under his new contract as head coach.

G. With regards Hanley.. Do you think he'll stick with it. I can understand the appeal of having someone who won't stand for any messing; but has he gone a season as coach without either getting fed up, or the club geting fed up with him ?

hanley has no sense of humour what so ever, the one thing you truly need if your to take charge of warrington.

This is why I never believe the rumours that go round. Rumours have always been easy to start and spread round the pubs, but now the internet is around it is even easier.

If the happenings behind the scenes were so bad, it would have been sorted. I'm going to touch back on the nostalgia piece again, when people have great memories about the late 80's teams, yet these kinds of rumours still went round then, and the team performed at a similar level to current Wire teams in the league.

If we lose, the fans get on players backs, yet IMO, we didn;t lose the other night due to lack of effort. Every time we lose it is down to lack of effort according to many, but could it just be that things like concentration, skill levels, fitness levels, tactics and decision making etc. are to blame?

Monas and King have been two of the biggest flops for years at Warrington IMO, yet I wouldn't question their effort.

Briers and Gleeson get a hell of a lot of stick, yet between them they have been one of the most dynamic attacking combinations in SL for the last few years.
It has now become accepted that Warrington have a culture issue, and the amount of times I have heard rumours from my mate who doesn't use the internet forums, when it is clear it has been started by the usual suspects is unbelievable. People take these rumours as gospel, spread them round, and then it makes it easier to believe it next time.

Bradford and Leeds have had their fair share of off field disciplinary problems, yet because they have won, there isn't an issue.

As a team, we just aren't good enough.

Yet we have a group of talented players??????

Yep. The things I noted as factors - [iconcentration, skill levels, fitness levels, tactics and decision making [/i- can all apply to talented players.

Skills need to be worked on constantly to be maintained and improved.

Fitness is a clear thing that can be improved through good training programmes.

Tactics, clearly a coaching issue.

Decision making, can be due to players not handling pressure well, or poor tactical awareness which can be worked on.

Concentration - this is one of our big areas, and I think this is through mental toughness and awareness of what is happening around them. Poor fitness levels can affect concentration levels.

The above things are factors in our lack of success, and none of these are factors which must have been caused by off-field issues.

People talk about all the years of under-achievement, yet for how many years have we actually spent the same as the top teams? 4 or 5 or so. These are the years that we should compare ourselves with the big 4, and I agree that we have underachieved in these years, as we should have been top 4 each of these years, but prior to that, when you look back at the squads, we had pants players in some positions.

I've said before, I'll only concede, that these players aren't good enough when they are given a coach with a pedigree and they still fail to deliver success. If that's the case, I'd then advacate a complete squad overhaul, until then, I'm still of the belief that we haven't had the correct man in charge to provide leadership and get this squad to realise it's potential. What makes me sad, is that I thought Cull could be that man, his passion along with the progress that we were making in 2005, I thought we'd get there but sadly never did.

I think Tony Smith would fancy his chances of getting this lot to a final given say, 2 years and a few tweaks of personnel.