Daryl Powell joined the Warrington Wolves in a hail of fanfares ahead of the 2022 Super League season.
Here was a head coach that had turned the Castleford Tigers from perennial strugglers to silverware hunters joining the Cheshire club in the hunt for trophies themselves.
Unfortunately, it has not panned out that way with the Wolves finishing second bottom in one of the worst seasons in Super League history for Warrington.
And, Powell believes that there have been multiple things that have gone wrong in what has been an embarrassing season.
“I’ve never finished this low in my coaching career, so I’m embarrassed by it but there are bigger things at play here if I’m being honest,” Powell said after the game.
“The team has not been good enough, the squad hasn’t been good enough and I haven’t been good enough clearly because we are where we are and I’ve got to take full accountability for that – but I think we’re going somewhere.
“This year has not been great and there’s no way I came in expecting that to happen, but it has.
“And it’s happened because of a lot of things that I came in and saw needed to change.
“If you’ve got 14 players out of contract and you hardly sign any of them the year after, what’s going to happen there?
“It’s obvious really and I think that’s what hurt us. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster and at times we have been able to almost tidy it up, a little before May 1 and then May 1 comes and it becomes a real, for want of a better word, s**tfight.”
It remains to be seen what the Warrington side will look like in 2023, but it is clear that the Wolves’ hierarchy will not stand for another dismal season like that of 2022.
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