That’s it, all done. Your reflection of season 2023 (& 2022) : Sat Sep 30, 2023 4:03 pm  

2 of the most disappointing seasons I can ever remember.
2023 was so much worse than 2022 for me. At least last season I knew we were going to be kack.
It’s like it’s took us this long for people at the top to admit they got it wrong. I hope there is light ahead, but we are once again carrying players that don’t seem to want to win at all costs.

Re: That’s it, all done. Your reflection of season 2023 (& 2 : Sat Sep 30, 2023 4:11 pm  

Yet another reset. It's quite depressing really. Unless Burgess is a miracle worker, I can't imagine much different next year.

Hopefully Tai is an upgrade on Matautia

Hopefully we survive the loss of Clark

Hopefully our other props can back up Vaughan more consistently

Hopefully Fitzgibbon gives us something different in the second row.

Hopefully we still have another strike player to come in whether in the centres or halves (or both)

Too much hope rather than confidence.

Re: That’s it, all done. Your reflection of season 2023 (& 2 : Sat Sep 30, 2023 4:20 pm  

Heard Clark got changed in the saints dressing room today and bathed Lees wounds in their bath after

Re: That’s it, all done. Your reflection of season 2023 (& 2 : Sat Sep 30, 2023 4:42 pm  

Even eight games in, I still knew the hype was overblown and that the wheels would fall off. But even I didn't think we'd fall as hard and fast as we did. Some of the worst performances I've seen us dish up. Tripe. It will be the same again next year.

Re: That’s it, all done. Your reflection of season 2023 (& 2 : Sat Sep 30, 2023 4:47 pm  

rubber duckie wrote:

:DEPRESSED:

2 of the most disappointing seasons I can ever remember.
2023 was so much worse than 2022 for me. At least last season I knew we were going to be kack.
It’s like it’s took us this long for people at the top to admit they got it wrong. I hope there is light ahead, but we are once again carrying players that don’t seem to want to win at all costs.

Not like you duckie? One or two signings announced this week and hopefully you'll be back declaring invincibility and predicting an unbeaten season. You should improve dramatically next season as Burgess won't accept the low standards that are inherent across Warrington's activity at the moment. I think you'll see a real lift. The likes of Currie, Drinkwater, Dufty, Ratchford and Williams won't have anywhere to hide, or any protection. Fitzgibbon is a great signing as well.

Re: That’s it, all done. Your reflection of season 2023 (& 2 : Sat Sep 30, 2023 4:53 pm  

Hayes at scrum half and a new centre(plus currie dropped)with that effort today and we'll do OK next year. I feel sorry for Clark, he's signed for saints at the wrong time. Doubt he'll win a Grand Final there.

Re: That’s it, all done. Your reflection of season 2023 (& 2 : Sat Sep 30, 2023 5:10 pm  

Powell was an absolute disaster, my main reflection is that he shouldn't have survived last season, the good start kept him in the role far longer than he should have been with us this season as well. KPF showed once again that he is a terrible decision maker in failing to act last season, I really hope he doesn't get involved in any club decisions going forward other than being social media manager. We have improved a lot since powell went, but we still have a long way to go and lots more improvement is required.

I hope Burgess can set higher standards than we have got used to accepting as a club and get full buy in from the players, if he doesn't then we have another painful season ahead of us.

Re: That’s it, all done. Your reflection of season 2023 (& 2 : Sat Sep 30, 2023 5:52 pm  

WireWireWire wrote:

Even eight games in, I still knew the hype was overblown and that the wheels would fall off. But even I didn't think we'd fall as hard and fast as we did. Some of the worst performances I've seen us dish up. Tripe. It will be the same again next year.

We were lucky with our early fixtures this season to come up against crap teams to enable us to get league points & a good points difference. We could easily have been in another relegation scrap.

Re: That’s it, all done. Your reflection of season 2023 (& 2 : Sat Sep 30, 2023 6:01 pm  

I wanted Powell to work as cas at times played very nice rugby, and you can say the team spirt he built there was a bug part of their sucess and something we feel our team has been lacking in recent years. However it was always a risk as getting a group of underperforming and very good rescued players performing above fan expectations is different to getting a team of good quality players performing to their peak abilities consistently.

This year was just so depressing watching us not be able to turn the season around after a few losses and get back to winning ways. Knowing its another year not winning a grand final after round 12 !!

The team and players have nowhere to hide they should shoulder thr same responsibility as Powell to for their performances on the pitch with some just plain and simply not good enough or not matching our expectations based on their performances at other clubs. Williams as an example we expect so much more from him not only because of his wages but his wigan and Canberra performances. I understand the difficulty of playingbbehinds poor pack however its those games we need our biggest players to stand up and they never seem to do that.

The young lads deserve better players around them to help develop them but also maintain good league performances. They have been a positive at time.

So glad this one is over do t thi k there's been as bad a season at the hj. How many games did we go into thinking we would win ?

I think next season depends on the signings and hop the players react to burgess as they have resisted dicipline and standards for years at the expense of 2/3 coaches some of them. If burgess is financially backed to get these players out as soon as he can then we will start to progress.

I see a lot of people say we lack creativity ? Yes but it's not really the issue we don't have structures that we can execute 9 times out of 10 to that works or forces great defence...let's get that first, moments Rugby is edge of the seat stuff but on its own it won't bring us sucess this is what I hope burgess can bring

Re: That’s it, all done. Your reflection of season 2023 (& 2 : Sat Sep 30, 2023 9:55 pm  

I can't complain with the process of appointing Powell. I wanted him to be our coach after Tony Smith and was pleased we brought him in. I thought a rebuild was long overdue so it was right to give him that brief.

2022 was obviously very turbulent and it was hard for Powell to keep the dressing room but that was necessary medicine, the key thing was to get a new set of players with the right attitude who would work in Powell's system.

The real killer was we brought in inferior players to the ones we moved out and they didn't even have any better attitudes so we got worse problems this year which made Powell's position untenable and makes it really hard now for us to rebuild the squad again with players under contract.

Perhaps Powell's best days as a coach were already behind him by the time we brought him in, or maybe we just really messed up the recruitment.

I'm not too optimistic about Sam Burgess and think we will go through more turmoil ahead. Looking at Burgess' recent history in the NRL he seems to be quite hot headed and I can see an explosion early on if he gets to Wire and finds a lot of players going through the motions. Whilst a lot of our fans will probably say, good, what they need is a coach who doesn't indulge them and will not be afraid to call them out, we could soon end up in another situation with a dressing room being resistant to the coach and Burgess has enough contacts in the NRL that he can easily say "stuff this I'm not wasting my time with these losers" sooner than we expect.

But time will tell.