good luck to PC at widnes,

warrington born and bred,

top bloke.

I picked up on that as well. He said it a couple of times. It made me smile strangely. It was like we've all made peace. I think if you asked Paul at any point he would admit that Smith has aspects of his coaching that is better.

Paul will be with Widnes a long time, just like the job he did at Warrington he will repeat at Widnes. He's well respected and certainly has the full backing from us.

Cullen has been a great servent to our team - warrington through & through.

brought many fantastic players in who are only now settleing into our team/play/culture and smith is reaping the praise for this.

cullen doesn't have the man management skills of smith, but he did set up a team that smith was willing to take to the next level, of which cullen should be given praise for.

I felt sorry for cullen in the end by the way he got treated by the fans but saying that, he should have left before it got to that point!

Good luke to cullen and all he does in the future

The Ian Dowie of Rugby League. He talks a good game but its not as if he has ever been able to put it to practice effectively.
That said, I hope he does well in future, as previously said, he bleeds Primrose & Blue. But he wasn't good enough to take us to the top.

Did a fantastic job from pulling us out of the shambles of 02 to the move from Wilderspool to HJ - be honest would Wire fans have wanted anyone else but a cut in half & bleed P&B man to oversee that transition? First couple of years at the HJ went well under his tenure, but the time for him to step down was in 06. After the euphoria of the Joey games it became clear he didn't possess the mental strength & detachment to coach this club towards winning trophies - it simply meant too much to him & that clouded his judgement. Players were stuck with long after they could not produce & expensive signings were kept in the team to justify their price tag & wages. PC would not have dropped Vinnie Anderson for Ben Harrison for example. He's a good coach with a very good understanding of the nuances of the game, sadly he seems to confuse players with his overcompliaction of things and that affected performances at Wire.

He's a man to remember as someone who did a job for Wire at an extremely difficult time. OK he stayed too long in the job, but maybe that's the board's fault as much as his. He was never going to win a trophy as Wire coach, but he's a Wire fan & Wire legend and deserves to be remembered as such.

Pretty much a perfect summing up of the situation. I'd only add one thing; he was, and hopefully still is, one of us. That ought to count for something too.

What absolute poppycock. He's one of the country's elite coaches. He may not be in the top 5, but he's one of the best.

IMO...he is currently at a level that suits him...and its no coincidence that we won a major honor the season he leaves the club.

I have nothing personal against the bloke...he can't be faulted for his commitment to his home town...simple fact is he just isn't good enough to be top coach. average player and an average coach.

I still think Cull is a good SL coach. I think he's a quality recruitment coach who's philosophies benefit the game & who's approach to the fans & media is spot on. He's probably a coach who has his limitations but the Warrington job was his 2nd job, there's plenty of time left for him to overcome these limitations.

If I was a Salford fan, Catalans fan, Harlequins fan - I'd rather have Cullen as oppose to their incumbants. He'd take them further, and he'll do so trying to entertain.

I think it's crystal clear now that he perhaps stayed too long, and that we needed a 'top' coach to really move us along, but that's because the clubs aspirations changed whilst he was at the helm and he couldn't adapt with that. Any club in SL that is happy to 'be in the eight', have a cup run & play good, attacking rugby should get Cull now, as he'd more often that not deliver that. We want far, far more than that.

I think he can take a degree of satisfaction from where we are now, he integrated Riley, Harrison as first teamers. He saw the potential in Bridge & Grix and went and got them. He created the monster that is Ben Westwood the backrower. He brought Morley back, even given his age etc, he backed his instincts when others didn't - an extension later he's still going strong.

In summary - he did plenty well, plenty wrong. (Bracek - shudders.)

If you can be too close to something, I think that was Cull. It wasn't life it was love.

another great post JWP

From reading these posts, it seems that there is, unsurprisingly, still a huge amount of genuine affection for Cull from the fans, whatever people's opinions of him as a coach, and I hope that he's aware of that, despite how things ended for him at the HJ.
Passions run high, I know, but maybe some might regret things that they said or chanted at that time? Or maybe they will think that the ends justify the means?
Anyway, as others have said, we can only wish him well for the future and thank him for his efforts for the P&B cause, which have been significant across many areas, on and off the pitch, and for many years, let's not forget.

I'd love to have a commentary team of Cullen, Barrie Mac and Brian Carney.

Cull did a great job and was shabbily treated by some of the fans on this board - especially during his last year.

Everyone is rightly entitled to their say, but I was fairly disgusted with some of the abuse he recieved (both professional and personal).

It was right for him to move on - and Wire as well.

I still have a great deal of admiration for Cullen. Despite what some posters say when they show his record in the immdeiate post Plange era as his record being the same. If I recall he made us harder to beat, got the points needed for safety and the team gave up fior the last two games against Salford and Wakey when were safe.

I agree he took us as far as he could, but is still one of the top British coaches irrespective of hwre that team is now.

My major criticism of him was half back recruitment. After signing a hooker who thought he was a scrum half in Sullivan, finding out he wasn't up to it we repeated it again with Monas. The most galling thing was hearing Cullen last year on Boots n All commenting on Wire highlights. 'Michael Monaghan back in his best position; hooker'

In hindsight he should have gone earlier but I still am greatful for his time as coach.

I think you have to read between the lines.
and in that i mean that; Monaghan was signed by Moran not Cullen and refussed to play Hooker for Wire under Cullen as was agreed by Moran.
Smith insisted to play Monaghan at 9 and thats why Cullen said what he did on Boots n All.

I felt he should've gone earlier, but the abuse he took from people not fit to whipe his arrse was disgusting and still leaves a sour taste in my mouth when I see some people at matches.

You've hit the nail on the head there. People seemed to forget what he did for the Club over the years, player for 15 seasons, assistant coach, a spell marketing the Club at a time when marketing was almost unknown in RL, and then Head Coach, probably 25 years of service, but then we've always had a small group of 'supporters' who seem to think it's their right to hand out the most appalling abuse.

cant knock the bloke, did wonders for the club and took us as far as he could, wire thru and thru pc, do you think he liked failure? calls for his head at cas game were disgrace and it shouldnt of ended the way it did, and that really upset pc more than anything else, cos he had told the board on the tuesday before the cas game he was gonna resign after the game if we lost.

Do you think he will get another SL gig and which club (Widnes aside) ?

The calls for his head were regrettable but that is professional sport and working in a results business.

Did he really tell the board he would resign before the game?

No, I think he probably won't. However, I don't think Agar, McNamara, McDermott are any better than him. They won't win Super League. Noble is head and shoulders above all other English coaches (apart from a certain Mr Smith who has taken UK citizenship).

EDIT: Apologies to Jon Kear. He is obviously a good coach and has achieved more than Cullen.

I think there are a number of current SL sides and Championship sides with SL aspirations who would do better than currently with PC in charge.

There is an unfortunate pattern in sport where an ex-player regarded as a club hero becomes coach of the club, it nearly always ends up in tears, in football you had Souness at Liverpool, Robson at West Brom, Hoddle at Spurs, Shearer at Newcastle. Shearer ended up doing what Cullen avoided in 2002, but I bet if Newcastle had stayed up, his spell in charge would have unfolded like PC, with a slow reluctant erosion of support from the faithful. The same thing happened in rugby league with Mal Meninga at Canberra and Wayne Pearce at Wests and Brad Fittler at the Roosters. Its hard to think of examples of club heroes as players where it went onto work for them as coach, Kenny Dalglish at Liverpool being the exception.

Now looking back with hindsight my theory on the PC era is that the timing of events, with the new stadium, new money and expectations etc, meant that the job came at the wrong time for him. He was doing well at Whitehaven and had earned a shot at SL but I think had he taken over Salford in 2002 instead of Harrison, he would have steadied the ship and toughened them up initially (like he did us), and then would have had a period of consolidation with fewer big name big ego players, lower expectations which would have allowed him to develop as a coach without having to deal with the whole emotion of it being the Wire which I reckon didn't help PC with us because it made him put more pressure on himself. He is still pretty young as a coach and he could have had 1 or 2 SL jobs before eventually ending up at Warrington as an older coach, look at John Kear who had a mixed early career at Bramley and Paris St Germain then Sheffield Eagles in the 1990s, has gradually become a better and better coach over the years. How would Kear have gone on if he'd been appointed Castleford coach at the start of SL and Cas expected him to deliver trophies?

I also think had Mike Gregory's sad illness not happened, that he would have coached us and it could have been the right job at the right time. He looked like he was a pretty good coach and had already got Wigan to two finals but this was the Maurice Lindsay era so Maurice would inevitably have sacked him a year or two later, and the Simon Moran/HJ stadium revolution would have been well timed for Gregory to come in. Maybe had things turned out differently, we could have had Gregory as coach and Cullen as his successor, and it would have turned out better that way.

You made, as usual, an excellent and articulate post, but out of personal bias, I just want to throw in Howard Kendall and Joe Royle (both Everton) as former players who consolidated their hero status as Manager. I would perhaps say Alan Ball, too, to some extent, enhanced his reputation as a manager of City.