Since I joined this forum many moons ago - and a couple of name changes due to IT issues (rather than being banned!) - I can't remember ever a time when there was't an ' "insert name of current coach" out ' thread.

So on a positive note which Wire coach was the best, and why?
(and please try to keep it to this rather than hijack it to a 'moaning' thread about other Wire coaches).

Since I started watching in the 70's, there are 3 that stand out - for different reasons.
In no particular order -

Alex Murphy in the 70's, not 2nd time round - for the trophies he won and his playing career with us, but he did come across as quite 'old school' - bawling and shouting, rather than necessarily 'coaching'. Could be wrong here. Game was different in the 70's.

Brian Johnson - I don't think he had the money we have now so ended up creating workmanlike teams in a period when Wigan just bought the top stars. We had the ocassional good season (3rd one year losing out by goal difference) and won Regal Trophy 90/91. He and his assistant (Clive Griffiths) introduced a sliding defence that's commonplace now, but was almost revolutionary (iirc) back then. Obviously it ended badly with an 80-0 thumping by Saints at KR that I doubt any of us saw coming. Given the (relative) lack of funds the owner (Peter Higham) was quite forward-looking employing a strategy of getting the best youngsters in early - Sculthorpe, Harris etc. - as well as Andy Gregory and the Welsh contingent - Davies, Ellis, Bateman.
Johnson's focus was on defence but not sure how technical he was

Tony Smith - didn't deliver the GF win and came in when we had money and stars (Gleeson, King etc), but won a stack of trophies and was/is a modern day coach. Tactically astute and always seemed to be interested in improving the players both on and off the field. Could be ruthless when needed (Gleeson, Rauhihi etc) but many argue he had his favourites and led to arguments with younger players (Savelio etc). A number of his signing didnt come off either.

Take your pick.
Name yours and why.

Didn't we have a good spell under Tony Barrow? Late 80s?

Might be the rose tinted view from my childhood, but I enjoyed the Billy Benyon era, where we always seemed to be there or thereabouts when it came to going for trophies. I recall a season where we really should have won the league, but a massive fixture pile-up led to us playing every 2 or 3 days towards the end of the season and saw us lose the title to, I think, Bradford. That era also had some great players, like Ken Kelly and Tommy Martyn, while also having probably my all time favourite, John Bevan, a player who would have been an absolute beast in today's era.

Like I say, my memories of that era are probably hazy, but I don't recall Benyon's sides having any real rotten spell and I'd be intrigued to know what others remember of his time and how he ended up losing favour with the fans or the board.

P.S. And how could I forget the magic of that night in 1978, when we took on, and beat, the mighty Aussies!!

And copious amounts of vaseline on the ball at kick off if I remrmber vorrectly (one of many such tactics employed.....)

Turn the form on its head and we went on to win the Premiership… now known as the Grand Final!

The one that wins us the Grand Final.

Was actually the Tony Barrow and Les Boyd coaching setup that sufferred most at the hands of the full-time, uber rich pieeaters.

Tony made some great signings (Drummond, Woods, Holden) and was a superb motivator whilst Boyd brought innovation and tactical nous. If Wigan hadn't been at the peak of their buy it if it moves powers, we'd have dominated from 86 onwards.

Johno was also a deep thinker of the game, but as a club we were starting to wane by that time. He could, however, probably claim to have come closer anyone (inc. Tony Smith) to winning the league. Miĺliseconds, the time it took for Russell Smith to blow his whistle.

The Tony Smith era gave us champagne rugby, money, success, some great players but I still wake at 3AM wide eyed and baffled as to how it never delivered a GF win.

For me, Barrow/Boyd. We didn't have a bottomless pit of money, but we spent it well. We played some great stuff and nobody, [inobody[/i yanked our chain.

End of season knockabout back then. Still was nice to win a trophy.

It was a brilliant day at Elland Road for those that were there. Halifax were the league winners and we/Boyd destroyed them.

My happiest times were when Tony Barrow was in charge. We played some good rugby and took no .

Tony Barrow once gave a team talk (away vs Salford I think) where his instructions were simply ‘I want violence’. I’m not ashamed to say I bloody love that.

Tony Barrow for me too. He could also be tactically astute. The drop goal fest at Central Park in the Premiership semi was a stroke of genius.

To be honest, I'd sort of forgotten about Tony Barrow given Johnsons period, and yes he's definately up there.
Interestinb that Les Boyd turned down the coaching role before Johnno was offered it (iirc).

In my lifetime, I caught the Barrow era onwards, it’s close between Barrow and Smith. Both teams played great rugby and captured the imagination of the fans.

The nostalgia in me thinks that there was more creativity back then, but on balance, it’s bigger athletes playing on the same sized field, but with sports science and preparation intensified making those gaps harder to find. Back then, defensive lines were dog legs, often completely shattered after running on a cabbage patch pitch. Gaps naturally offered themselves more, but there was definitely more willingness to explore those chances than the current percentage based game.

The Smith era, 2010-2013 in particular, was amazing to watch. As someone says above, I often think back and wonder how we didn’t win it. Not even the 12/13 finals where we were in good positions in the actual final, but the 2011 team who were head and shoulders the best team in the league but got beat by true champions in Sinfield, Burrow, McGuire et al when it mattered most.

I do have a soft spot for Cullen too. Took us from the abyss to a team that was actually good to watch and expected to make the playoffs as a minimum. Even when we got beat we’d often score 20+ points. His ultimate downfall, which nobody saw coming, was lack of discipline!

Tony barrow and sir les..along with Andy Greg.. bish.mark Roberts..tamati..bob Jackson..Johnny surprisingly was sub in the 86 final came on and trotted thru the Halifax defence to score a superb try..great days..and the game was far better to watch back then

Totally agree it was a great day, I was just pointing out that at that particular time, the Premiership was quite low on the hierarchy of trophies.

Could probably be argued that back then, there was too many prizes to go for, which ended up devaluing most of them. At least now it's pretty straight forward, it's basically GF or nothing.

Interesting view. One year later we played Wigan on the Premiership final at OT in front of nearly 40000 so it gained popularity.

Personally, I think there is a reasonable case for another trophy. The CC is basically a three game knockout for SL clubs and the GF is out of the reach of most clubs.

We had some great games in the Lancs Cup for example - Widnes at home around 88/89 when we destroyed a Widnes team in their prime etc.

And it meant we won the odd trophy as well.

I don't disagree that there was some great moments in the various competitions that we had back then, but it sort of had the feel that everyone got their hands on silverware at regular intervals and it ended up devaluing some of the wins - bit like when we won the Regal trophy in 1990/91. We were bloody awful that season, yet still clawed a trophy mainly on the back of an underdog win over Widnes in the semis.

Interesting you mention that 1987 Premiership final at Old Trafford - probably the worst quality final I've ever seen, I'm amazed the crowd is recorded as being so high. OT's capacity was only in the 50,000's back then and I recall the Stretford End being quite roomy on the day and the rest of the ground being quite scattered crowd-wise. Perhaps my memory, combined with various personal contributory factors might dim my recollections..

Was pretty dour, asolutely threw it down all day. My (admittedly vague) recollection is Tony Humphiries almost scored to level things.

One of the Stones Bitter warm-up characters from the TV ad of the time got serenaded by the Wire fans with "You fat B**tard" after he showed allegiance to Wigan.

Happy days.

I started watching in the early Brian Johnson era, so here is my run down of the coaches in order:

1. Tony Smith
Easily the best. Brought the best out of talented but underfiring players like Briers, Bridge, Michael Monaghan and Matt King. He made a big call early in on shipping out Martin Gleeson which set the tone for him being in complete charge. In the early days his signings were superb and by 2011 and 2012 we were a completely dominant unit. The regular season became almost boring because we were just watching a procession of teams get completely smashed off the park. The quality of rugby we played was good - especially when we had Solomona offloading everywhere, but was a bit 'clinical' to be described as great attacking rugby - quick breaks finished off by Myler or Atkins running home from distance and tries scored in the corner from Briers' bombs to wingers.

Three Challenge Cups and two League Leaders Shields represented a level of success most Wire fans had never seen before and could never have dreamed of a few years earlier. We also lost 3 Grand Finals and a Challenge Cup and so there is a sense of frustration that we could have had more. At our peak between 2011 and 2012 we were stopped by an all time great Leeds team which was better experienced at winning big games than us, and our best chance in 2013 was derailed by injuries.

A lot of our senior players left in 2013 and we needed to do a rebuild, and TS never managed this properly. His signings weren't very good apart from Chris Sandow's half season flourish. He brought through a lot of young players but they didn't kick on apart from Currie who was then messed up by injury. As time went on the quality of rugby stagnated and there was an "end of days" feel for a while.

2. Paul Cullen
Rejuvenated the club from a very low ebb and helped drive a different mindset in terms of ambition, not just in the way we saw ourselves but the way we were perceived from the outside. He energised a team that was limping to relegation and secured survival. He got us to leave Wilderspool with dignity - the final year at the old ground when we made the playoffs brought back a positive feel that we hadn't had for about 8 years and meant we moved to the HJ with an optimistic mindset. By 2005, he had us beating top teams and going on a long winning run which we hadn't done for years, and we were playing great rugby too. Cullen was the perfect coach to have when Simon Moran began stepping up the investment, he had the drive, ambition and personality (as well as the media presence) to create the impression that we were a club destined for the top. He brought in most of the players who went on to win trophies under Tony Smith - he wasn't just bringing in big names, he went for talented young players like Grix and Bridge, and he turned Westwood from a mediocre centre to one of the best back rowers in the game.

There were definitely two halves to Cullen's time in charge. First half, up to the point we lost to Hull in the playoffs with Andrew Johns, we had real momentum. After then we went into slow decline. He signed a few players who didn't work out - notably Michael Sullivan, and some of the existing players started to tread water. Cullen wasn't the best at addressing a slide - he could be tetchy when we were under pressure and he had a tendency to try to control everything at the club. He went on a season or two too long.

3. Brian Johnson
Created a team with a really strong spirit which pushed Wigan right to the limit and only missed out on winning a Championship on points difference. If we had been in position to back him with investment like Bradford and Saints did, rather than losing our best players, we could have been one of the major powers in the early years of SL, so there is a big sense of "what if" about Johnson's time.

We might have rose tinted glasses with Johnson though, because he was a great player. It took him a while to get a good side together, we were inconsistent for a long time and the quality of rugby we played wasn't always great. Some of the long-standing problems we've seen with Wire teams were definitely present through Johnson's reign. I don't remember ever feeling like the fans wanted him out though, unlike the others. But like some others, there was a sense of him having gone on too long by the time he left.

4. Steve Price
Did well for about a season and a third. Reached two finals in his first season, and made us better organised and more resilient, and we knocked out a seemingly unstoppable Saints side in the playoffs. Started the next year well with Blake Austin in sparkling form. Then it all seemed to go wrong. The rest of the league had worked us out and there was no Plan B. When the momentum went against us in a game we had no way to stop it and we were prone to going on long runs of bad form. On top of that the rugby was grindingly dull. We had enough talented players to keep making the playoffs but we were easy beats when we got there and bad playoff exits became a hallmark of Price's time.

Price does get bumped up a few places in this list on the back of one highlight, he won the Challenge Cup, beating Saints in a game where Saints threw everything at us and we stood firm. That one game summed up all the best of the Price team that we had seen in the first year - well organised and resilient under pressure. It was the only time it really surfaced after the first year but it was the perfect game to do it. In years to come we might start to look on Price more favourably because he is one of a small number of Wire coaches to have won a major trophy.

5. Darryl Van de Velde
Was in charge during a turbulent time off the field and started and ended his reign with the club in chaos. The fans never really took to him, he could seem mopey and negative and there was a sense of him creating a clique of big Aussie signings and allowing a casual culture at the club - this was the peak era of hearing stories of players being seen out in town partying.

But DVDV is the coach off this list who I felt more generous to with the benefit of hindsight. We'd just sold Iestyn Harris before he arrived and his first move was to use part of the transfer fee to bring in an 18 year old Lee Briers from Saints. One of the most significant decisions in club history! He also had us playing some exciting rugby and we did score a lot of points with him - despite usually shipping in more. Even before Allan Langer arrived, we were scoring freely with Briers, Toa and Hunte and when Langer was here we always had a shot of turning over even the top teams.

6. Jon Dorahy
On the basis of results he did quite well - considering the utter meltdown we'd had in the second half of the Centenary season, finishing 5th in the first season of Super League was better than expected and he stabilised things for a while. He found a couple of talented players in obscure situations - a teenage Toa Kohe-Love in NZ and Richard Henare playing for Carlisle. But that 5th place hid the fact we were well behind the top teams and we actually lost more games that we won that season. I always had a sense that Dorahy wasn't that good a coach. He'd been Wigan coach the year we nearly beat them to the title and you could see he alienated their dressing room and by the time Dorahy's second season started you could see things were about to fall apart.

7. Darryl Powell
He was brought in with a big job to do in clearing out a squad of talented underachievers who seemed to be stuck in comfort zone, and it wasn't surprising that his first year involved dressing room unrest and disappointing results. The board backed him with signings and he started his second season with a very powerful pack and the team started like a house on fire before falling away. As we stand we are at a crossroads and the jury is very much out on Powell, and is leaning towards a negative verdict unless he turns things round.

8. David Plange
He was a promising up and coming coach who had been successful with Hunslet. He had a good eye for a player and when money was made available after Steve Anderson left, he brought in Ben Westwood and Nat Wood, plus Graeme Appo from the French league and Danny Halliwell on loan. Halliwell scored some important tries for us and those other three were significant signings in the Cullen team which followed Plange. Unfortunately he had taken over a ship that was rapidly sinking and he wasn't able to stop it, and he never got another chance as head coach so left the game. He did get us to perform in the two key games against our relegation rivals Wakey and Salford, which were crucial come the end of the season.

9. James Lowes
After Cullen who had been a fantastic ambassador for the club with the media and a very charismatic presence, Lowes was the complete opposite. He always looked scruffy like he wasn't bothered and he came across terribly in interviews, all his press conferences he seemed to have a smug sarcastic manner like he viewed himself as superior to the media and was enjoying his own private jokes. He never seemed the right fit for the job of Wire coach and always felt like a temporary appointment. He did make two significant signings before he left in Mick Higham and Garreth Carvell.

10. Steve Anderson
An odd appointment and clearly not our first choice after we had been publicly stood up by Neil Kelly. He talked a good game and obviously was well regarded in Australia but things fell apart from the first game. Didn't seem to connect with the players, had left them underprepared physically and was basically our version of Liz Truss getting outlasted by a lettuce.

Wow sally you need send that off to the publishers, got to be a few bob in it for you.

Van de Velde was a [idreadful[/i coach.

He had the charisma of a walnut, and a hairline to match.

This thread goes to show how stats can be quite misleading. Sally’s post is superb, and I largely agree. I’ve already admitted my conscious bias towards Cullen, but his win rate was actually pretty bad. 48.9%. Granted the start and end of his tenure would have impacted that.

Lowes again, I think is more of a bias tilt. His win rate wasn’t actually as bad as it felt at the time, at 43.8%.

Interestingly, Plange has the lowest win percentage at 25, Anderson at 33.5. But the “feel” was the complete contrast. Anderson’s era was absolutely dire.

Up to date, Powell is 44.7, just behind Cullen, Dorohy (50) and Bowden (52.5). For those interested, Powell’s 2022 would have saw him second last at 32%.

Smith, Price and Barrow all cleared 60%, with 66.4, 63.2 and 62.9 respectively. Smith would have been 70+ without the 2017 catastrophe.

There's only one statistic that counts - regular, sustained success, in the tangible form of silverware in the cupboard.

In the eras we have spoken of, the successful teams have been the most ruthless in their pursuit of success. In the 80s Wigan went out and bought the best, Bradford revamped their entire structure and brand, Saints and Leeds established a production line of talent and hired and sacked coaches without emotion.

Us? Plange, Anderson, Dorahy, Van de Velde. Coaching non-entities. Even during the halycon days of TS we threw money at the project and when the conveyor belt of overseas talent dried up, their was no plan B.

Impressed Sally.

Agree about TS.
Even though we won the CC with Price, I still have nightmares about his style of play. There were only 3 or 4 matches where I could say ' I enjoyed that'. The semi against Hull was one and the pre season match against Brisbane (?) was another.
Seemed simply bereft of ideas.

Anderson was a complete disaster, as was Lowes.
I was suprised it went so badly for the latter, but clearly not up to the job of head coach. It just emphasizes how good TS was for us.
I didn't want Dorahy, and I think Plange was unfortuate. Wrong place at the wrong time.
I'd put Johnno at 2 and either Cull or DVDV at 3.

I definitely think personal bias plays in to it, Lowes should have been above Plange in my ranking but I really disliked him, whereas I thought Plange seemed like a decent guy who was handed a hospital pass taking over that team in mid season.

I can see a case for Johnson at 2. I tried to be extra critical in my analysis of Johnson to counter my bias towards him as one of my all time favourite Wire personalities. In the early Johnson era we went through some rough seasons when we were in the lower half of the league and we were frustratingly inconsistent. He managed to cover up some disappointing league seasons by winning trophies (Lancashire Cup and Regal Trophy) and getting to Wembley. Thinking back, there was more of a feel good factor about winning those trophies in an inconsistent season than there was about winning the Challenge Cup under Price!

I also wonder if I was a bit harsh by saying some of the rugby we played under Johnson wasn't great. We played in winter on bad pitches so inevitably that had an impact on the style, and we did have some nice tricks and runarounds with the halfbacks and Mike Gregory or later Kelly Shelford. And the 1993/94 season was a wonderful time, especially with Davies winning Man of Steel and Harris breaking into the team and a young Sculthorpe coming up the ranks too. A great era of hope when we could see the first cracking of the Wigan reign of terror.