Hungry Like The Woolf? - Saints Appoint New Boss

A new chapter will begin for Saints in 2020 with the appointment of Kristian Woolf as Head Coach. The club announced the deal today (September 10) which is initially for a two-year period with the option of a third in favour of the club. Woolf replaces Justin Holbrook who will join Gold Coast Titans at the end of the current campaign after two seasons in charge. Holbrook will be a hard act to follow having won the League Leaders Shield by a distance in both of his full seasons in charge at Saints. He still has the opportunity to add a Super League Grand Final title to his CV should Saints manage to win at Old Trafford on October 12.

So what do we know about the new man with the lupine moniker? Woolf is currently an interim Head Coach at Newcastle Knights having taken over from former Saints head honcho Nathan Brown who departed at the end of August. In his two games in charge of the Knights Woolf has overseen a 38-10 walloping of the Titans but also felt the pain of a 54-10 shellacking by the Penrith Panthers. An assistant to Brown at Newcastle since the start of 2019, the pair have seen their side hobble into 11th place in the 16-team NRL table, missing the playoffs. If that doesn’t sound all that promising it is Woolf’s work as Head Coach of the Tongan national team that really catches the eye.

When Woolf took over the reins at Tonga in 2014 they were ranked 14 in the world. Who even knew there were 14 teams playing international rugby league? Reports that Thatto Heath's reserves were ranked 15th at that time remain unconfirmed. During his tenure Woolf has improved the Tongans beyond all measure. They have risen as high as fourth in the world rankings, famously beating New Zealand in the 2017 World Cup before losing out in the semi-finals to Wayne Bennett’s England. Woolf has worked with some of the best players in the world including Jason Taumololo and Will Tupou. As well as his role assisting Brown at Newcastle he has also been the number two at Brisbane Broncos during his storied career and, like Holbrook, has a history of working well with younger players and junior squads.

All of which suggests that Woolf will not fail due to lack of experience. It seems clear that the Saints hierarchy have decided to stick with the model which saw Holbrook arrive in 2017. Identify a young, hungry NRL assistant and hand him the opportunity to be the main man in the slightly more forgiving environment of Super League. At 44 Woolf fits that bill. There have been calls among some of the fan base for the appointment of an English coach, with Salford Red Devils’ Ian Watson uppermost in the thinking of many. Watson has worked relative miracles in 2019 to lead the Salford side to the brink of a playoff appearance but is still largely unproven at the very top end of the Super League table. In sticking with the method which worked last time the club are playing it as safe as possible, even if there is always an element of risk in any coaching appointment. The obvious flaw in the plan is that in going back to the NRL well Saints are in danger of becoming nothing more than a stepping stone for ambitious Australians. There is no guarantee that we will not all be sat here in two or three years time lamenting the loss of another coach who has been offered an opportunity to lead one of the NRL's behemoths. If that happens there will be frustration but it will also likely mean that Woolf has been successful during his time in St.Helens.

There will be extra expectation on Woolf as the top man at Saints in comparison to most NRL jobs. The Australian league is fiercely competitive with any one of half a dozen or more clubs in contention for the top prize when each season gets under way. Here, Saints are expected to win most weeks. Anything less than a top two finish in the league and at least an appearance in one of the two major finals will be considered a bit of a let-down among the majority of the support. This is a club and a fan base, this writer included, who felt that two fourth-placed finishes under Keiron Cunningham represented something of a crisis in need of immediate action. And that was during the rein of a club legend, a local man steeped in the traditions and history of the club. Woolf will need to hit the ground running and his honeymoon period will be short.

It is not only results where Woolf will be judged. It is hard to believe that the need to uphold a certain style of play wasn’t discussed when the club’s decision makers held talks with their new man. Tonga is a team renowned for playing an exciting, open brand of rugby league and that could have been one of the keys to identifying Woolf as the new man. As well as improving the results Holbrook has made Saints much more entertaining to watch than they were during the two years of toil under Cunningham. The latter’s results, though not spectacular, were not awful either which highlights the need not only to win but to do it with a certain swagger. If you come here and play five drives and a kick or shuttle rugby from dummy half then you had better have a team as good as the one Daniel Anderson had in 2006. The harsh truth of the matter is that for all their qualities and for all that they have been so much better than anyone else over the last two seasons, this Saints side is not blessed with that sort of talent.

You can only concentrate on the here and now and play what is put in front of you. What Woolf does have is one of the strongest squads currently knocking about in Super League. Jonny Lomax is the best player in the competition in 2019 while the front three of Alex Walmsley, James Roby and Luke Thompson are the envy of any side anywhere in the world. There’s pace and guile in wingers Tommy Makinson and Regan Grace, craft and experience in Lachlan Coote at fullback, and dynamism at centre in the shape of Mark Percival and Kevin Naiqama. Morgan Knowles is seen as a future international loose forward and has earned his first call-up to a Great Britain squad this week, while veteran back rowers Zeb Taia and Dominique Peyroux still have plenty to offer Woolf as he bids to pick up where from where Holbrook will leave off.

If any surgery to the squad is required it is perhaps in the depth in the pack. Kyle Amor and Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook each have another year after which a decision probably should be made on both, particularly if Matty Lees returns to full fitness after his bowel perforation and keeps improving at the rate he has so far in his career. Jack Ashworth has stalled slightly in 2019 but will perhaps benefit from the arrival of a new man with new ideas on how to best utilise the skills he has. If not, his future may be under threat too while there are question marks about whether Matty Costello is a genuine quality centre at Super League level. The salary cap means that you can't have superstars in every position as was the case during Anderson's pomp, but at the same time Woolf may feel that there are one or two areas where the depth could be better. On a more positive note James Bentley, Joe Batchelor and Aaron Smith are exciting projects for Woolf to work with as he looks to mould his own team to follow on from Holbrook’s good work.

Yet perhaps the most fascinating decision Woolf takes will be around the scrum-half position. In the space of a year Danny Richardson has gone from Dream Team halfback to water-carrier as Theo Fages has usually been preferred to partner Lomax. Will Woolf be the man to finally help Richardson realise the potential he showed in 2018 or will he take the decision to move on from the Widnesian product and put all his eggs in the Fages basket? Is there such thing as a Fages basket? Both should see the arrival of Woolf as a clean slate, a new opportunity to stake their claim to be the man around whom the attack can be built. If there is one thing that has been underwhelming under the stewardship of Holbrook it has been the lack of a really dominant number seven through whom everything flows. Largely that void has been filled by Coote, Lomax and company but if this side could develop a genuine field general at halfback with a bit of pace to boot then they could go up another notch even from the level that they have shown over the last two years.

Saints were at pains in their statement on Woolf’s appointment to point out that they would not be making any further comment on it until the man himself arrives for his first press conference as boss in November. That is to allow Holbrook and the squad to be fully focused on the task in hand for the remainder of 2019, which is reaching and then winning the Grand Final. It is right that the matter is put to bed for now to allow that, but these should be exciting times for Saints fans albeit with just that little smidgeon of jeopardy that will always come from appointing a new man at the helm.