The end of something new for Warrington?

The pressure, the unanswered questions and the poor results are all piling up for Warrington’s manager, Daryl Powell.

Will he finish the season with the club? If he does, will he still be there next season? How long will Warrington’s board give him before enough is enough? Wire fans will be searching for answers as some want him gone, and some want him to stay.

There is no doubting that the Wire have had a poor year. Currently sitting in 10^th place in the Super League and knocked out of the Challenge Cup in their first game of the competition. Opinions are flying in left, right and centre when it comes to Daryl Powell.

Powell took over at Warrington after the end of the 2021 season, ending his long term relationship with his previous club, Castleford Tigers. He was applauded there for his services, guiding his ex-club from a team going nowhere to a team battling for trophies.

However, he never actually managed to get his hands on any major trophies, winning just the one league leader’s shield in 2017. Warrington are a club that in recent years have flirted with major trophies, but failed to get over the finish line on many occasions. This would lead many people to believe that the manger they needed had to be a serial winner.

However, the club opted to go for Powell as they believed he would be the man to take them to the next level and allow them to dominate the English scene, or at least get them back to winning more trophies.

Powell has stated on many occasions that he needs time to be able to change the culture of the club, and results would follow once he could do the background work that the fans rarely get to see. This indicates that a lot of work still needs to happen before Warrington can be back challenging at the top of the Super League.

What the fans do see is what happens on the pitch. The Wolves have shown a very weak mentality on multiple occasions, combined with overall poor Rugby League. They see where the team is sat in the table, and they see Powell’s worst ever win percentage at any club of just 35%.

So, what is the right decision? Does Powell need to stay and keep doing the hard work off the pitch whilst results continue to be poor? Or do Warrington need another fresh face that can maybe deliver in all areas?

When you look a bit deeper into the club you will see that Warrington have always underperformed, no matter who is in charge. They haven’t won a League Championship since 1955. Their previous manager, Steve Price, was able to win one Challenge Cup in four years. Nevertheless, he couldn’t change the Wolves poor mentality and losing culture.

These are the things that new coach Powell is trying to address. This year was never going to be a great success for the club on the pitch, but off it many things have changed. However, the results have been so bad that many fans already want him gone and would like him not to finish his rebuild.

Powell has released many players and made a large number of signings for this season, and the next. It will be very interesting to see if the changes he has made will have a big effect in what happens on the pitch next year.

It is clear that he would like to stay and finish what he started. First of all he will need to keep the club from being relegated, and then deliver much better results to get a large majority of the fan base back on side.

If he keeps his job heading into 2023, it will be all about how they start the campaign. Because another season like 2022 will not be accepted, and Powell will no longer have a future with the Wolves.

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