pointless argument some people will be happy being entertained but not winning !!

Respect works both ways.

All the stats indicate he plays better on the right.

He only moved to the left when you signed an out and out right sided player in Gelling.

Square pegs round holes.

It isn’t his fault you guys threw silly money at him.

If it came down to it I’d have retained King but that was never an option just like Wardle signing for Wire was never an option.

If you throw in the effect signing King would have on our ability to build a squad looking to go back to back then it’s Wardle as we need Thompson to replace Smithies whilst retaining French and Field.

The question I can answer is out of King and Wardle who has been more effective in 2023 and in my opinion King has been the most influential signing of the two in 2023.

Us Wire fans have not experienced either recently.

This is all a moot argument anyway. It appears he is coming back. Some people rave about him, some don't. Post contract he stunk the place out with us and had disciplinary issues before we sent him to Huddersfield, since then he has made thinly veiled jibes about his time at Warrington. What is it that you to read?

They had a point though, really.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but looking back at the Powell spell it’s a train wreck. Todays England squad announcement is evidence enough of that, he got rid of Hill, King, Mulhearn and allowed Clark to leave. All of them in the squad. Mulhearn aside, there’s no surprise that they are in there. And Charnley can count himself unlucky, and Cooper was in last year but not available through injury this time around.

5 of 24 are in our 2024 squad, 3 are ex-Warrington players. One third of the squad is/was at Powell’s disposal, and served up the worst two years of results in 20 years.

How many of those players you cite were in the the wire sides that bombed out of the playoffs 3 years running?

Powell ultimately failed but he knew a comfort zone when he saw one.

I just hope King hasn't been pulling his tripe in the faint hope of a contract at Wigan. The proof of his effort & commitment, or lack off , will shine in the 2024 season.

Did he? Just because King and Charnley have learnt from their mistakes doesn't mean Powell was wrong. I have it on good authority King refused to get on the team coach after an away game and undermined Powell, he also forgot his passport against Catalans. Cooper, we all know what happened there regarding his second business. These players obviously learnt from their mistakes and didn't commit them again at their other clubs.

I'm probably Powell's least biggest fan but as for Clark going to Saints you absolutely cannot pin that on Powell.

Sack him then. If he’s breached his contract, or brought the club into disrepute, or plain insubordination, sack him. Don’t pay him to go and win a title with a rival. This is not fully Powell’s fault, as I’ve said throughout it’s the management broadly, including Powell. If the business let Cooper do X, Y and Z then they should build in a minimum standards or a clause in his contract to reflect that. If they’ve not, and they’ve given permission for him to do that for the betterment of his post-RL career, they are the ones that need to renegotiate those terms. So long as Cooper’s attendance/performance hasn’t changed, he’s kept to his side of the deal that pre-dates Powell. Not sure what lesson Charnley learned, he’s the same player he always has been.

This isn’t a Powell thing, it’s idiotic, chaotic and catastrophic mismanagement of a business.

The point about Clark, and that list, is that he had all of those players at his disposal and couldn’t get a tune out of them. Wane believes that 8 of our current/recent English players are in the best 24 available right now, but we couldn’t beat an egg. Clark may have still left, but you have a chance of keeping them if you’re playing well and building something.

Good post. I heard we wanted to keep Mulhearn but his wage expectation was higher than ours. That happens at times. In hindsight we should have kept Mulhearn and avoided Dudson.

I'm sure he will come back with a clean slate and give us a fresh go, I could imagine he would get a bit disenfranchised if the new coaching setup doesn't get the mood around the camp right. He's had a year in a dressing room full of winners, our coach was a winner as a player so hopefully that will set a different tone in the camp that king and most of the others are much happier with.

“ Cooper, we all know what happened there regarding his second business.”
No we don’t - this is a persistent rumour with absolutely no truth in it.
Cooper was never given any extra time off to spend on his business and never gave less than 100% to playing for Warrington.
His only “crime” was speaking his mind when asked to do so, starting with the so called clear the air weekend in York, when he found Powell didn’t like what he had to say.

The Coops rumour was never about “extra time off” as I heard or read it!
The rumour was about Powell asking players to come in on a period of time that was part of their regular time off.

Coops and Powell just didn’t get along.
Coops was granted a release on good terms from the top.
At that time Powell had the full backing of the club, this being the error Middleton eluded too after Powell was axed.
This will be where the DoR will come in.

And Cooper barging into Price for the world to see or was that just accidental and they did get along? I can't see him barging into Peet like that personally.

Kings return to Wire will all depend on King himself.. if he comes in with right mindset and the willingness to listen and learn under Burgess.. and shows the form and mentality he was displaying whilst at Wigan.. wire will get a decent centre.. if he comes back sulking and bad attitude then the club will have an issue..

Touching on Cooper I believe it was an issue of him wanting a new deal with stipulations in that the club wouldn’t allow.. Powell saw a problem within Cooper himself and wanted him gone..

A way for Powell to test which players were the most committed to the cause. 'Team/Club first' mentality.

I'm 100% certain that had Wane/Peet or Woolf asked the Wigan or Saints players at the time to do this to buy into the 'one team' ethos, they'd have duly obliged. It's in their DNA. For our players it seems it's just another job/club to bide their time at, on a better than average RL wage.

I'll be very interested to see which approach Burgess uses to revolutionise the 'comfort zone club' issue. I've seen his interviews where he talks about his time in Rugby Union. He was furious about losing a final because in the week building up to it, some team members were focused on what was happening further down the line with internationals, and didn't have the passion to commit every last breath to the task that week.

Good luck Sam. You'll need it.

We got rid of Cooper and brought in Vaughan. One piece of recruitment the club actually got right. Although I don't know why I'm mentioning this on a thread entitled centres!

It's all about standards and legacy. A player joining Wigan and Saints will be joining an organisation of serial winners. They know what is needed to win and have players and staff in the camp that have won the biggest honours - multiple times. They will know the club is far bigger than them, competition for places is high from the junior ranks and that they need to knuckle down and perform. The DNA and culture will be pervasive.

A player joining Warrington may hear some half d comments from a clown with a crucifix earring about "wanting to be the best" and "US franchise model" then will look around and see a few good players, some decent players near the end of their career who have failed at crucial moments, and a good number of journeymen players here for the wage and some taking the . Lines of authority will be blurred with players having long term relationships with directors outside of that with the coach. If they don't like something they can probably lean on a director at a common place drinking session to get their way. They know the club Chairman is now seeking to restrict the freedom of the coach. They will see players who never get dropped on form. They may even start to believe the hype that is pumped out from HJ HQ about how good they are. They will have knowledge of our monkey on the back (and how we tolerate it so long as we are plucky losers). They may even find it funny. They will be mindful of our innate ability to collapse under mild pressure and so confidence in their team mates won't be high. They will look at the recently appointed DoR and maybe even dimly remember a journeyman prop forward from the 1990s who now represents the sporting profile of the club.

However Sam Burgess is the ray of hope in all of this and he stands out as different. He has X factor. Let's hope it's enough.

Show me a sport that is any different these days. All sports have a finite number of players & the "cream" of them might rise to the top at a handful of clubs from which any could win a title or a trophy. Below these "elite" clubs there are others of varying degrees of mediocrity.
Once the ability to buy in from abroad is exhausted or the possibility to go back years to find a generational qualification is unavailable, mediocrity really will kick in.

I absolutely refuse to accept that Warrington RLFC does not have the real opportunity to challenge and emulate it's historically more successful neighbours a mere 7 and 9 miles away if it gets its together.

We are talking about putting together a side that can win about 20 games from 27 then win 3 games in a row at the end of the season. It's a task that our neighbours have achieved readily. Not putting a man on the moon.

Perhaps they have a more determined & professional set up at our rivals. We know we have beaten these teams but can't sustain a challenge. To be successful the whole club needs a kick up it's massively under performing booty. Let's hope Big Sam is the start of revival & not just another sticking plaster to attract fans because of his reputation.

You are correct, of course, and we all wish Sam well. At prima facie winning 70% of our games and 3/3 (maybe 2/2) games at the end sounds less daunting than "overcoming 68 years of not winning the league". It is achievable.

Well maybe my response here should be on the 'which positions are our weakest' thread, but without Ratch, who would be our kicker?

I can't readily think of anyone near his standard - and that's a lot of points.
I hope there's a cunning plan in place......

King as 3rd marquee only counts as 50k on the cap he is great value for money. The 3rd marquee can only be UK players n if homegrown even better. What he is paid in real life is irrelevant the club were happy to pay it at the time and that's just the way it is and let's not talk like he is on 150k a week like a footballer probable just about that a year!! Rugby league contracts are not great in terms of money to the players unless your an nrl marquee or George Williams.

Also who else in tbe squad would you rather take the 3rd spot considering a new signing will cost us 100k on cap. We might save a little on what we pay them but it takes away another 50k of cap space which is more valuable than what we would be saving.

I understand your point, and I agree - King on £50k on the cap is good value and it maximises what we can spend on the cap by using it on him, makes sense to use the spot on him as things stand. However it’s the marquee spot he takes up that concerns me, I would rather have another George Williams or an NRL player of similar quality on the cap and have him count for £100k of cap space.