Yeah i assume it's all the legal mumbo jumbo that needs to be sorted out before the signing is official. I'm happy with our squad for next year and can't wait for the season to start

What a very unbalanced squad. Expect more of the same next season. Powell banking on sheer size + individual brilliance in the opposition 20 to get us home. Really poor centres and Harrison needs to improve a LOT.

Im also seeing (for the second season) hooker being a weak point for us.

Very pessimistic about next season but I am terrible with predictions so could be a good omen.

Clark didn’t get a pre-season last year and as lively as Walker is he can’t do much from play the balls in our own 20. If Clark can get back to form and we can spend a lot more time near the opposition line, it could be completely different next year. I guess we’ll have an idea from the first few games.

Matthew Shaw reporting that PNG flyer Jimmy Ngutlik is persuing a deal in the UK. We need to sign him, he is class.

He would be a quota player, and it looks like we will be signing Drinkwater, which will be our last quota space used -up.

Unless the rumour regarding Kasiano reneging on his contract has legs?

The hold up with Drinkwater is over some kind of severance pay from Catalan.
He is still under contract and doesn’t have to leave Catalan, his is/was on £110k there and will be earning £30k less per season at Wire.
Allegedly telling Catalan to split the difference to £15k and he will sign for Wire.
The French club won’t agree, so Drinkwater won’t complete. Allegedly.

This is easily solved, depending on what we are prepared to do to get Drinkwater. I assume his salary is a cap issue, not a case of us refusing to match his Cats salary? In that case we pay a £30k transfer fee for Drinkwater and Cats pay his severance demands, without losing a penny. Simples. And not beyond cap rules.

BTW when does pre-season start? We can't really afford to be without our normal halfback pairing for pre-season, unless its conditioning only and not skills early on.

I assume it starts in the next week or so, unless powell feels starting early last year was a mistake? Also as far as i'm aware Vaughn & McGuire are still in Aus, as is Dufty, and Kasiano is still in France so i'm assuming there's no immediate start for it.
Also on the hooker being a weak point i don't believe that's the case in 2023. Daz Clark will find his top form again behind our pack, he's had a full off season which will do his body the world of good, and he'll get a full pre-season. Also ritating him with Walker will do him the world of good. I think we look good at hooker. And with Drinkwater and Williams in the half we look strong there. Wing we look strong, centres are ok but not the best. Behind a bigger more dominant pack Currie will hit good form again and Nicholson looks good. We look good across the park. Strong aggressive forward pack, and skill and pure speed around the pack. I understand the pessimistic feelings with this year but i have a great feeling for next year. We have pack Leaders in the likes of Vaughn and McGuire, if we let Drinkwater run the show more and let Williams roam free that will cause Havoc. Walker and Dufty talk alot on the pitch and help direct play. I genuinely think we'll be a much more cohesive squad next year, and play as an actual Team. I can't wait, and i didn't have this feeling for 2022 so i'm going with my gut feeling, and that feeling is good

Centres are NOT ok!!(until wrench is fit anyway)

But ... the best fit England Centre is currently Callum Watkins. I reckon our lads are OK.
There are not many UK Centres about.
To sign a decent centre we'd need to offload one off the overseas quota.

just my over reactive imagination, if it was Drinkwater, wgy is it not announced, perhaps its someone still playing in the world cup.
can we sign the George Williams that plays for England

That’s a No, we can’t fit that version under the cap, we have to make do with the one we got

Think mid table would be a good result with this squad.

Anyway it will give the Powell-out lobby a good argument because they can demand that "second season we need to be top of the league after 3 games or he's out" etc. Pretty much any coach would struggle to make top 4 with this squad.

The grim future I can see is that we have a mediocre season, jettison Powell and end up with a downgrade at coach as no elite coaches are interested and so we just pick up someone who is lucky to have their shot in SL and the general downgrading of the club's on field infrastructure continues.

Why is Top 4 not achievable? I mean we have no scrum half or centre, but assuming we fill those positions and Powell turns out the be the messiah after all.

PS : I have seen no posts on here saying "top of the league after 3 games or out". I've seen plenty say after 6 games we will know if there is progress.

I completely disagree that this is a mid-table team, this is a quality squad with a few weaker but still not weak positions. We'll easily be in the top 4 with this squad.

No elite coaches are available. Nor were they available when we were replacing Price. Nor will they be available at any point in the short to mid-term, unless we class an untried Aussie assistant as 'elite'. Price anyone? We're the second biggest club in terms of income after Leeds, and they just signed up an unwanted Aussie who coached Bradford in the lower leagues. I think he lost his job to John Kear?

Powell's record may look poor in his one year at Warrington, but his record over the last two decades blows any other potential candidates out of the water.

If Powell isn't the answer we'd better pray that we can miraculously unearth some gem from the NRL reserves comp. I'm not holding my breath, and I think our problems go far deeper than the coach's style. Hopefully we're fixing that.

That is exactly the problem. If we get rid of Powell we'll probably be in for guys like Rowley, Agar or Poching.

I honestly cannot understand where all of this negativity is coming from with our team.

Let's start with Daryl Powell... Has he ever been considered a bad coach? No... Does one poor season at a new club make him a bad coach? No.
He talks a lot about accountability and self reflection, and lets face it, he's a smart man/coach. We believed that because we could offer more than Castleford, it would be an easy step up for Powell to start challenging for trophies straight away. I definitely expected a good season, but we always knew that a potential rebuild was taking place based on comments DP made about contracts and culture. In time, he will settle in like he did with Castleford, but he will have better players at his disposal.

Onto the forwards. I don't know why some people are still treating it as some sort of gimmick. Like that's all we're going to be good for. We have Dudson, Kasiano, Harrison, Vaughan, Mikaele and Bullock who will all be effective. This is what we wanted. We said the pack was too small last season and we were right. Now it has not only been corrected, but we have quite possibly the biggest pack in Super League.

With the backs, and starting with the spine which would be Dufty, Williams, Drinkwater (Ratchford/Dean/Hayes) and Clark, we'd have at worst a Top 5 spine in SL but I think it's at least Top 3 behind Wigan and then you can make an argument for Saints, Leeds, Huddersfield and Salford just on the spine. We know Drinkwater is a reliable player, we know Williams and Clark can light up SL, and we have Dufty at FB who looked dangerous even with an injury + fatigue from lack of game time in the NRL. He's also the fastest player in SL. With our centres, as much as I'm in agreement that it may be lacking, they're not so stupid that they don't know what lines to run and when to pass it off. Ratchford does sometimes slow the play down, as does Mata'utia, but Minikin is no slouch at full fitness and Wrench has the ability to be one of the best in SL when he's fully fit and more experienced. Players like Currie and Nicholson can thrive behind this forward pack as well.

We have a "Top 2, not 2" forward pack, and a minimum Top 5 spine, with a good coach that prides himself on being self-critical. And of course I admit, it could all fall apart again, which is even the case with Saints if Wellens is so poor, but on paper we are actually in a great position and there's a lot to be excited about.

There's a lot to like in this post. There is also Josh Maguire to add into the forwards (or have i missed something). A couple of things DP has to deal with and build within the squad is unity and belief.

He's still coming. I just forget to mention that aspect of the new additions.

Vaughan seems like the kind of player to lead by example on the pitch. The BBQ incident back in Australia may have tainted his ability to speak with authority when it comes to being a leader, but he always plays like one. As much as a don't actually like Maguire as a player (for anyone wondering why I say that, I think he is actually useless, pardon my negativity) he doesn't add much, and seems to give away a lot of penalties, I'll take that for now as long as he has a no nonsense attitude and gets the team focused on the task at all times. If he's solid defensively then I'm fine with just that.

Thewlis comes across as a passionate leader to me as well. Not many people would have heard this but during a home game last season, we had a goal line drop out, Thewlis shouted "fight for the badge on the shirt, wire" which was unexpected from such a young lad, but not so unexpected if you consider that he's also a wire fan too.

The more I think about the depth in the forwards, and the potential for improvement from the backs/spine, the more I get excited about the season.

Is the “Powell-out brigade” those wanting the coach to do what he was brought in to do? He was brought in to make an underperforming team perform. Been backed to the hilt to do that, with a hand picked squad, so why should it be accepted to do worse than before his appointment?

If we’re to believe that the squad was littered with lager swilling T-shirt salesmen then was Price the messiah? If he could get a 3rd place finish and a cup run out of them, but without the bad apples we can now only hope for mid table, how can that be good enough?

I’m not “Powell out”, I want a strong club and a strong team that competes and connects with the fans. But we can’t accept another year like last year of petty squabbles and fire sales compounding pathetic performances. It’s time to see the results of that painful turnover, so crack on and get the job done.

Dufty and McGuire were at that BBQ too. It was a Covid breach and a draconian reaction by the Australian police and club (although Vaughan was on his 3rd warning).
Not like they were ed up in a strip club at 3am on the day of a game. They can do that when they arrive here

Yeah the powell out thing is boring as F now, he's come in, shook things up and changed the squad for 2023 for the better. 2022 was a bad off season that's now gone. 2023 will be a good season. We now have a big affective forward pack who are proven and good players, so the negativity towards them is bizzarre. Like Kinetic said the spine we have is quality so negativity towards them is also bizzarre. We have some pure speed and skill in Dufty, Thewlis, Ashton, Williams and Daz Clark can shift, and wrench is rapid. Willams behind a good pack is superb and we have a good pack next year, Drinkwater is a controlling half and will take pressure off Williams. Our centres are NOT bad players and compliment our attack and defense. and we've gone from no real leader this year to having 4 in and around the pitch. All i see is positivity for 2023 and nothing else.

I think a reasonable about of cynicism is inevitable. We’ve had so many false dawns, excitement over signings that have turned out to be utter bobbins, and there are so many unknowns/reliance on lots of new personnel hitting the ground running.

All that said, I’m really looking forward to next season and (hopefully) seeing us be competitive again.