If the last 3 years of Lineham's tenure is the "Warrington Way" I'm glad we're changing course. Price's rugby league was awful to watch.

Tom Lineham… “Darth Powell”

These are not the props you are looking for!

What?..,when you’re 1/14 to win and get trounced?

Far too early IMO. It would be good to have a full squad available before judging really. There hasn't been much in terms of performance, our prop situation really isn't helping at all. Catalans and saints are better than us, the spirit shown in fighting to the end against catalans was encouraging albeit too little, too late but we Steve price teams threw the towel in if we went 2 scores down and far too often scoring 20 points in a game looked very, very unlikely.

I hope we see some changes this week, time for Powell to select the players who are best adapting to his systems. Longstaff in for Hughes who for me shouldn't make the 17, I'd like to see butler for Philbin as well.

I am happy for Powell to be given time build the success we aspire to.
Just looking at Huddersfield. Last year everybody was saying that Watson over performed at Salford because he was a Salford lad. It takes a good 12 months to 2 years to mould a team to how you want them. Similar applies to Brett Hodgson. It will take time. When you look at our results for Tony Smith's first year in charge we were pretty poor but managed to get a decent draw in the challenge cup. In 2010 apart from regulation defeats by saints, Leeds and wigan we only lost to Hull KR and Catalan away before the Huddersfield game when Nathan Brown went galloping down the touchline then progressing to the performances of 2011
The club need to be strong here. If players dont want to embrace the Powell philosophies then the club should back the coach all the way and if that results in big name players leaving then so be it. I am sure it took Tony Smith a bit of time to persuade players like Briers, Bridge, Westwood to buy into his style of play. It also took a while to sign Solomona that was a very similar player (ball handling) to Ali Lautiti that Smith signed for Leeds.
I would prefer we dont go back to signing the forwards like we have signed in recent years just because they are "available" or we go with what we have got and if the right player becomes available then we will be in a position to put a deal together.

Well said. Tony Smith took time to get the side into shape and got rid of high profile players (Gleeson) and dropped others (Briers).

No more "filler" signings or "gamble" or "last chance saloons". Less is more. Go for quality.


Some atrocious singings since 2014 (start of our demise)

Roy Asotasi
Anthony England
Matthew Russell
Gary Wheeler
Ryan Bailey
Ben Pomeroy
Dom Crosby
Jordan Cox (RIP)
Matty Blythe
Sitaleki Akoula
Matty Smith
Lama Tasi
Leilani Latu
Luther Burrell


Quality players lost since 2014
Lee Briers
Ritchie Myler
Michael Monaghan
Brett Hodgson
Ben Westwood
Paul Wood
Ryan Atkins
Simon Grix
Trent Waterhouse

Those. ‘Atrocious’ signings was hard reading.

Huddersfield...

They've lost against Wigan and beaten no one special. Let's see how they do against Catalans, St Helens (and us) before we get carried away by Watson.

Oh God, I had forgotten that Matty Smith played for us! I must have been trying to block it out, for the purposes of mental self-preservation.

Fair point, but of the atrocious signings how many were meant to be 1st 17?
I would guess Asotasi,, Russell, Akouala and Crosby (no one could have possibly foreseen what would happen). Maybe Latu? Rest were squad fillers in a salary capped sport.

Sadly it seems like things are panning out as I suspected. We've gone into the year with a good coach but a substandard roster especially up front, which most of us knew deep down all off season. I know a few on here were trying to put a brave face on it, asking "which teams have better squads than us?" (well we know 2 already).

Things will get worse and the likelihood is this season we will be worse at least in terms of win/loss ratio than we had been under Price which will be hard to take. I expect Powell will get some flak on here but the problem is poor recruitment rather than him being a bad coach.

This season will also make clear the limitations of some of our players who have been overrated by our fanbase for a couple of years now, who thought it was all down to Price and thought our roster was so good any other coach would have been winning trophies with it. In time we might look back at the Price era and say winning a Challenge Cup and making 2 Grand Finals was a decent return given the players he had.

I'm happy we moved on from Price and happy we got Powell but think this season is a write-off.

Well said sir, they've had the easiest 5 games of anyone in the league.

How do you think this "poor recruitment" comes about ?


Is it ...

1. We see truly good players but cannot get them ie) that we cannot persuade the top players without offering a marquee wage

2. We see good players but our squad is so poorly balanced cap value wise we cannot afford them

3. We cannot see good players

4. We think average players are good players.

5. We recruit good players but they don't deliver their previous form consistently.

6. We think our current players are good and no need to replace them.

I think it's a case of 1, 2, 5. Top players will naturally want to go to historically top sides so they can win something. ie) If Saints and us are in for a player it is likely they will chose Saints unless we make an offer they cannot refuse which causes 2.

Quite a high number of games played though for "squad fillers". In bold the players who made more than 1/2 seasons worth of appearances.

Matthew Russell 96
Roy Asotasi 59
Sitaleki Akauola 44
Anthony England 37
Lama Tasi 18
Jordan Cox (RIP) 18
Dom Crosby 17
Ryan Bailey 15
Ben Pomeroy 12
Gary Wheeler 10
Luther Burrell 7
Matty Smith 5
Leilani Latu 3
Matty Blythe 3