Ahead of the 2025 season, we’ve looked at three Warrington Wolves players who could be surprise packages in Super League.
Sam Burgess took charge of Warrington ahead of the 2024 campaign and despite the Wolves losing in their season opener against Catalans, it quickly became evident that Burgess was the right hire.
He took Wire to the Challenge Cup Final where they would narrowly lose to quadruple winners Wigan Warriors, a loss that they would avenge handsomely later in the season when they won 40-4 at Wigan’s Brick Community Stadium.
Warrington would eventually place third before losing 10-8 to Hull KR in the play-off semi-final in a season that saw the club take huge strides forward.
Sam Burgess wasn’t afraid of utilising youngsters either, something that he may do once again in 2025 given that the club have made just three signings to counteract the seven departures.
We’ve picked out three players who could be surprise packages and play a bigger role than some expect.
Three Warrington Wolves players who could be surprise packages in 2025
Leon Hayes
Hayes managed to wrestle the starting shirt from Josh Drinkwater early on last year before suffering his season-ending injury and has since been handed the number seven shirt for 2025. As the presumed starter, there’s not much of a surprise that he’ll play a role but we think Hayes could become one of the club’s brightest stars.
In his first-team showings last season, he was excellent and was set to massively kick on. Whilst that development was stunted by injury, he could carry it on in 2025. In a brilliant Martin Gleeson system and learning from George Williams, Hayes could shine. The addition of Ollie Leyland as competition will also help push him even further.
Max Wood
Wigan Warriors haven’t done many things wrong of late but allowing Wood to leave as a 19-year-old at the end of the 2023 season could have been an error. The prop forward signed with Warrington and has since signed an extended deal tying him to the club until the end of 2028.
That shows just how highly he is thought of at the Halliwell Jones Stadium and rightly so. A devastating runner, Wood is an athletic prop and he got a chance to show that last year as he made 12 appearances in Super League. He’s primed to be more involved in 2025 which could be the year he becomes a key household name.
Cai Taylor-Wray
We saw glimpses of Taylor-Wray in 2024 but fans would have loved to see a lot more. The lightning full-back was wonderful to watch in the six Super League appearances that he made – scoring three tries. He was first thrown into the action in the fixture against Wigan a week before Wembley, impressing during the narrow 19-18 defeat.
Later opportunities came when Matt Dufty missed out through injury and culminated in his Round 26 performance where he scored two in a 66-0 rout of Huddersfield. Therein stands the problem for Taylor-Wray getting game time – Matt Dufty would need to miss out so opportunities could again be hard to come by, however, a loan move would make perfect sense for the teenager who signed a three-year deal in September.
