Re: Steve price : Mon Sep 23, 2019 9:12 am  

What Widdop and Austin know best is an NRL structured game...as does Price...A system Madge installed at Wigan to great success.
All three now have learnt a little more to the UK game too.
Sounds like a plan to me

Re: Steve price : Mon Sep 23, 2019 10:19 am  

We won the Challenge cup. One of two trophies I'm bothered about winning in any normal year. Plenty of other good teams start the season with the same goal.

If we don't win a trophy I expect us to be strongly challenging for one year in year out, if we don't hit that target, then depending on circumstance I'd be looking to replace the coach.

As Price delivered the challenge cup this season, I'm quite happy. We won one of the two trophies that 6 clubs probably had their eyes on in pre season. Yes SL was disappointing in the way it finished, but much of that I believe was down to playing the final third of the year with our two first choice half backs missing.

We've added some quality at 7 in 2020 which has been required for some time, for the first time in a long time we have two half backs that I am happy with going in to a new season.

Price has made his mistakes, easy to say with hindsight but not replacing Brown was a big mistake, and replacing him with Smith at the last minute just made a bad situation worse - he was no better than Patton. Atkins leaving with no replacement was also strange, why didnt we look to strengthen? Seems very un Warrington like to have £90k or so salary cap space for Brown sitting unused for most of the season, then also allowing a decent earner in Atkins to leave without replacing him with someone also seemed odd.

The big one for me is this: Other clubs seem to be able to put new players into existing attacking structures and their style of play continues unaffected (largely). With Warrington it always seems to me if a significant player (Briers / Austin / Clark / Ratchford etc) are missing, we completely have to change our game plan as a result - we seem too reliant on individuals rather than playing collectively as a team. Think Cas or Saints etc. their style of play continues unchanged and they remain successful, regardless of injuries. Thats a key area we need to work on next season with Widdop, lets put the structure around him and Austin, and make sure we arent reliant on those two players to make the structure work.

Sorry, that ended up a longer post than I expected! In short I'm happy with Price, but we have areas to improve on if Warrington & Price are going to be successful.

Re: Steve price : Mon Sep 23, 2019 10:26 am  

Price's comments after the Cas game saying "I'm not quite sure where we went wrong" and "we have been clunky for weeks" hardly inspire confidence for 2020.

Re: Steve price : Mon Sep 23, 2019 11:15 am  

Wires71 wrote:

Price's comments after the Cas game saying "I'm not quite sure where we went wrong" and "we have been clunky for weeks" hardly inspire confidence for 2020.

Interesting as he's been saying 'there are easy fixes to our form' for the last 4 months. I'm still waiting.

Re: Steve price : Mon Sep 23, 2019 11:33 am  

Him admitting that he didn't have a clue about the details of Austins injury during the Cas game and then the 'tired' excuse also didn't sit well with me. Now we have Livett off on loan to HKR...maybe Jason Clark should be banished to darkest Hull for the season instead.

Re: Steve price : Mon Sep 23, 2019 11:43 am  

Alffi_7 wrote:

We won the Challenge cup. One of two trophies I'm bothered about winning in any normal year. Plenty of other good teams start the season with the same goal.

If we don't win a trophy I expect us to be strongly challenging for one year in year out, if we don't hit that target, then depending on circumstance I'd be looking to replace the coach.

As Price delivered the challenge cup this season, I'm quite happy. We won one of the two trophies that 6 clubs probably had their eyes on in pre season. Yes SL was disappointing in the way it finished, but much of that I believe was down to playing the final third of the year with our two first choice half backs missing.

We've added some quality at 7 in 2020 which has been required for some time, for the first time in a long time we have two half backs that I am happy with going in to a new season.

Price has made his mistakes, easy to say with hindsight but not replacing Brown was a big mistake, and replacing him with Smith at the last minute just made a bad situation worse - he was no better than Patton. Atkins leaving with no replacement was also strange, why didnt we look to strengthen? Seems very un Warrington like to have £90k or so salary cap space for Brown sitting unused for most of the season, then also allowing a decent earner in Atkins to leave without replacing him with someone also seemed odd.

The big one for me is this: Other clubs seem to be able to put new players into existing attacking structures and their style of play continues unaffected (largely). With Warrington it always seems to me if a significant player (Briers / Austin / Clark / Ratchford etc) are missing, we completely have to change our game plan as a result - we seem too reliant on individuals rather than playing collectively as a team. Think Cas or Saints etc. their style of play continues unchanged and they remain successful, regardless of injuries. Thats a key area we need to work on next season with Widdop, lets put the structure around him and Austin, and make sure we arent reliant on those two players to make the structure work.

Sorry, that ended up a longer post than I expected! In short I'm happy with Price, but we have areas to improve on if Warrington & Price are going to be successful.

Smith being 'no better than Patton' wasn't the reason for his addition...He was cover for hb injuries during the play offs and mainly because Austin's recovery was in doubt.
Unfortunately Smith got a suspension and we played an unfit Austin...and got found out.

Releasing Atkins was to have zero effect on the remainder of our season...he wasn't going to get a game at Warrington and I feel the club had a moral obligation to let Atkins have an influence on his future to help keep Wakey in SL

Re: Steve price : Mon Sep 23, 2019 6:13 pm  

rubber duckie wrote:

He was cover for hb injuries during the play offs and mainly because Austin's recovery was in doubt.

LOL... the club did the deal to sign him before the game he got injured in.

Re: Steve price : Mon Sep 23, 2019 10:37 pm  

He was injured well before that...He got injured 3 times!

Re: Steve price : Wed Sep 25, 2019 12:39 pm  

Just listening to Shaun Wane on super league podcast, i love his passion, would love him at wire.

Re: Steve price : Wed Sep 25, 2019 1:47 pm  

rubber duckie wrote:

Releasing Atkins was to have zero effect on the remainder of our season...he wasn't going to get a game at Warrington and I feel the club had a moral obligation to let Atkins have an influence on his future to help keep Wakey in SL

Its not so much the releasing of Atkins that I had an issue with, it was the not replacing him on the cap.

We could have replaced Brown (Hindsight is a wonderful thing) earlier in the season, we could have also used the salaries from removing Johnson and Atkins on the cap. Seems strange to me that we didn't, its not like we need to cut costs. Brown especially turned out to be a judgement call we got horribly wrong.