Warrington Wolves may be flying high at the moment but it comes after a very difficult 2022 Super League season as they finished 11th which saw many at the club suffer abuse.
Speaking on the Out of your League podcast, Warrington CEO Karl Fitzpatrick spoke about the impact of this abuse:
“It does make you more determined 100%, but look we had a plan when we interviewed Daryl. He said ‘look this is a rebuild’. We didn’t envisage that it would turn out like it did but we knew there was going to be ahigh turnover of players.
“We had 14 players off contract and we retained two, so within that you’ve got instability. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a psychological framework and motivational theory and one of the foundations is safety, we took that away from 12 players. As human beings are they going to be totally for the cause? I can’t blame the players for thinking ahead, so having that created uncertainty in the camp.
“After games we’d go and meet in this café and it was like The Apprentice. Do you know when things have gone wrong and they dissect it?”
He also revealed he received an email telling him to get the “eff out” of the club:
“It was like eff out of our club, I remember one was like ‘eff out of our club, you’re more interested in merchandise sales than winning games.’
“When you’re a leader of an organisation when things aren’t going great you gave to put your shoulders back and find positives because people are looking at you and how you react.
“At times there was a bit of bravado but deep down you’re thinking about how tough it is.”
He also revealed a funny story about Daryl Powell dealing with abuse:
“I felt for the people in the organisation that are public facing, the guys in the ticket office, the girls in the shop. Daryl was getting abuse, he tells a funny story actually that he was in a pub and a guy came up and gave him half a pint of mild and said ‘I’m giving you a half because you don’t deserve a pint.'”
