There will be a review piece on the Wakefield game. It’s half finished, in fact. But sometimes events get overtaken by other events. Life comes at you fast. Unlike the Saints three-quarter line at Wigan.
And so it is that today (August 31) we had it confirmed that Saints head coach Kristian Woolf will leave the club at the end of the season. He is departing to take up what has been described as ‘an opportunity’ in Australia. That opportunity may or may not be a place on Wayne Bennett’s coaching staff at the new Dolphins NRL franchise due to start play in 2023. That was what was widely reported a few weeks ago despite denials from Woolf and an eerie silence from everyone else other than the Australian media.
I think most Saints fans have been expecting Woolf’s departure. The deeper into the final year of his contract we went without news of a new deal the more likely it seemed that he would leave. Hearing him speak at a fans forum at the club last night (August 30) seemed to reinforce that expectation. He spoke glowingly about the club, the town and the community. He thanked everyone at the club and the fans for helping him and his family to feel so welcome and to feel a real part of the community. But it was all past tense. Like it was the end of something. Not quite your soon-to-be ex telling you to focus on what good times you’ve had together before ripping out your heart and shoving it up your arse, but something comparable.
You can’t blame him. He has spent three seasons with us. Three seasons in a different culture on the other side of the planet. And three seasons in a post-pandemic world that is so very different to what he would have envisioned when he made the move to the UK at the end of the 2019 season. Three months of his first season were spent in lockdown, communicating with players who were still relatively new to him via Zoom and WhatsApp groups. I can’t imagine that these are things which made the transition easier. Yet he remained until now he has an opportunity to win the Super League Grand Final in each of his three seasons with the club. That would be a unique achievement among head coaches in the summer era.
Full disclosure. I haven’t always been a fan of his style. Saints have wonderful players capable of playing some mesmerising stuff. Yet their success under Woolf has been built on conservatism. Completing sets. Getting in the arm wrestle. Going through the processes. When this has produced uninspiring attacking displays he has batted it away with suggestions that the team has been ‘clunky’, the current go to buzzword and euphemism for when you lack either the imagination or the will to throw the ball around. As if there was so much more to come next week from an attack that was actually just playing to his orders.
But whether I like the style or not it has worked. Not only has Woolf won back-to-back Grand Finals with a third within reach, he also ended Saints’ 13-year wait for a Challenge Cup triumph when his side beat Castleford at Wembley last year. Just this week he completed the full set of domestic honours available to a Super League coach when he secured a first League Leaders Shield. It does not really matter what you make of the methods if the team are winning trophies. One of the main complaints made during Keiron Cunningham’s reign was that he bored everyone to death on his way to those semi-final defeats in 2015 and 2016. And he did. But if five drives and a kick had led to as many tries as it did goal-line dropouts his coaching legacy would be somewhat different. He’d probably still be there. But if you are a Saints coach choosing risk averse rugby - even one with his own statue outside the stadium - then you’d better win.
There is a perception that Woolf has massively improved our defence from where it was during the Justin Holbrook era. The Tonga head coach has improved it, but not by as much as you might think. In his three full regular seasons in charge Woolf’s Saints have conceded an average of 13.16 points per game. In that time they have played 65 games. In Holbrook’s two full seasons as the boss Saints shipped an average of 13.32 points per game. Of course that sample is one season fewer but without a pandemic to contend with Holbrook coached 52 regular season games in that time. The numbers aren’t that different. My working theory on why they are perceived to be so far apart defensively - apart from the recency bias that has taken Cunningham almost completely out of the GOAT debate with James Roby - is that our defence has arguably won us more games under Woolf because the attack hasn’t been quite as good as it was under his predecessor. And that that is by design.
Does that stack up? Well, yes actually. Over the same period Saints’ attack under Woolf has averaged 25.1 points per game. In the two seasons under Holbrook the figure is 31.3 points per game. I suppose it helps your attack when you have Ben Barba but maybe the bonkers genius of our former fullback points us to the different philosophies of these two great coaches. Woolf would never have signed Barba because he was a risk and Woolf does not do risk. And he does not care about your entertainment. He’s a prolific winner. The ends justify the means.
The counter-argument is that Woolf’s Saints would not have lost a 2018 semi-final because said bonkers genius decided that tackling was no longer worth his time as Holbrook’s Saints did. To Warrington too. Put simply, if winning is your thing and you don’t care whether it entertains you then maybe Woolf is the greatest you’ve seen . If you’re more of a romantic who yearns for the days when George Mann was latching on to a ball that had been headed over the try line by John Harrison - can you imagine George getting in the grind or the arm wrestle?…actually I bet he could arm wrestle - then you might be Team Holbrook, Millward or McCrae. Whichever you prefer is your choice. You takes your pick. But to place Woolf so far ahead of others - particularly Holbrook - is revisionism or chronic amnesia. And we haven’t even touched on how Holbrook had to drag the club up by its bootstraps in mid-season from the end of Cunningham’s frazzled tenure while Woolf arrived straight into a winning culture.
Whether he is the best or not Woolf is great, we’ve established that. And with that, are we not in a whole world of trouble now that we are losing someone of his calibre? Only if we get the next appointment wrong. Much of the fan base seems to feel it is time for Paul Wellens to get his chance. Wellens has been assistant to Woolf since Richard Marshall left for an ill-fated tilt at the Salford head coaching job at the end of 2020. Wellens has also been involved with the international set-up for a number of years and has been an assistant to England coach Shaun Wane for the last two years. He is not relying quite as heavily on his legendary playing career as Cunningham was at the time of his Saints appointment in 2015. Yet given the disrespect shown to Cunningham since his admittedly troubled coaching stint I would hate to see the same thing happen to Wellens should it not work out for him either.
Other names on the wish list of fans in the speculating while hoping it doesn’t happen phase of Woolf’s protracted departure were Ian Watson (Woolf without the trophies) and the rather more entertaining and certainly more decorated Tony Smith. Or what about Paul Rowley, currently overseeing a Salford revival that has them tearing it up and striking fear into any team who might bump into them in the upcoming playoffs? I did see a mention for Leigh Centurions’ ex-Wigan up the jumper merchant Adrian Lam. He’s currently romping away with the Championship thanks to an expensively assembled all star squad. Yet he is still the same Adrian Lam who turned Wigan into Super League’s lowest scorers last season. To be honest I thought his nomination was part of some Ricky Gervais-style spoof script. And in any case if Lam gets it we’d have to put away that 2020 Grand Final reaction shot following Jack Welsby’s miracle moment.
Since Cunningham the model has been to comb Australia - or at least the east side of it - for a hungry assistant who wants to make a name for himself as a head coach in Super League. It has worked spectacularly on two occasions now. It is currently working out pretty well for Leeds Rhinos who have gone from lower mid-table also rans to playoff dark horses under the previously unheralded Rohan Smith. His only head coaching experience before arriving at Headingley was at Championship basket case Bradford Bulls, and that ended when they were liquidated. Maybe Saints will go down that NRL assistant route again and the new man will be a name we are not yet familiar with.
If he is half as successful as Woolf - to whom I offer sincere gratitude for keeping us where we want to be and wish nothing but the best of luck - then he will be an unqualified success.
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