The Story Of 2023
After a blistering start, Warrington reverted to the mean of their mediocrity in 2023. They made the playoffs, but when winter was turning to spring in the early weeks of the season the promise had been of so much more than a routine first round defeat at St Helens.
The campaign opened with eight league wins in a row. Wire set a searing early season pace. New signing Paul Vaughan looked like the best prop in the league while another new boy - former Catalans Dragons halfback Josh Drinkwater - looked like he was operating at a different speed to the rest of Super League. Even Matt Dufty looked great. After Leeds were thrashed 42-10 on the opening weekend there were victories over Huddersfield, Salford, Hull KR, Leigh, Castleford, Hull FC and the Dragons. The first league defeat of the season did not arrive until mid-April when Wigan turned up at the Halliwell Jones Stadium and left with a 13-6 win.
At which point the self doubt which has prevented Warrington from winning a title in almost 70 years resurfaced. On the back of the Wigan defeat they were dismissed 28-6 by Saints. Wins over Wakefield and Hull KR followed as well as a Challenge Cup triumph over the Dragons. Yet the seeds had been sown. Leigh and Hull FC enjoyed victories over the Wolves, who went out of the Challenge Cup to Wigan in mid-June at the quarter-final stage immediately after a damaging league defeat at Castleford.
The wheels had well and truly fallen off. The losing run extended to eight games in all competitions by the time of their next success, an 18-4 win at Hull FC at the end of August. Powell didn’t make it through that sorry sequence, sacked after an abject 42-6 humbling at Wakefield Trinity at the end of July. Youth boss and former Wire front rower Gary Chambers came in on an interim basis.
Chambers did just enough to guide Warrington into a playoff berth. They won two and lost two of their final four games to sneak into sixth place and claim the last invitation. They weren’t around for long, bounced out 16-8 at Saints in the first knockout round. It left them with disappointment fused with a sense of a season having been put out of its misery. Maybe next year.
The 2024 Recruits
Perhaps the most important new face at the Halliwell Jones is not a player but the new Head Coach. Chambers was never viewed as a long term replacement for Powell. Former star Lee Briers was on the wish list after the good work he has done as an assistant at Wigan and Brisbane. Yet it was another Brit who has been learning his trade as an assistant in the NRL who got the gig as Sam Burgess was appointed on a two-year deal. It seems a little left field, but whatever happens it is unlikely to be boring.
Back to the playing staff then, where the imported additions are back rower Lachlan Fitzgibbon from Newcastle Knights and Zane Musgrove. The latter was a free agent after his contract with St George-Illawarra came to an end. His final season in the other red vee began with a drunken scrap with team-mate Mikaele Ravalawa which brought him a fine. Standard behaviour which leads Australian players to board a flight to England.
Fitzgibbon has no such chicanery on his record. Instead the 30 year-old brings the experience of over 100 games with the Knights. The Wire pack is further bolstered by the addition of Jordy. Crowther from Wakefield. Crowther made eight appearances on loan at Warrington last term and now has a two-year contract in his back pocket. Fitzgibbon and Crowther will add depth to a back row already featuring England international Ben Currie and the man who got Matty Peat all in a funk when he moved to Warrington from Wigan, Matty Nicholson.
Those of you who read this column’s preview of Saints’ 2024 season will know that Wolves hooker Daryl Clark has joined the red vee. In response, Wire have added not one but two hookers to the squad in response. Brad Dwyer returns to the club where he started his career after spending 2023 with Hull FC while long time Wigan Warriors stalwart Sam Powell also climbs on board. Powell spent over a decade at Wigan, making 250 appearances in cherry and white. Now 31, he was likely to be pushed to the margins by the arrival of Kruise Leeming at the champions to compliment the improving talent that is Brad O’Neill. Powell will look to start afresh in Cheshire.
Rodrick Tai is a Papua New Guinean international centre acquired from Queensland Cup outfit PNG Hunters. The 25 year-old has six caps for his country and will look to strengthen a problem area for Wire. To that same end Toby King has returned from a loan spell at Wigan where he managed to win a Grand Final. It is easy to mock King and we will again, but that experience just has to be worth something to a team which has continually failed to get it done in that department.
The final arrival is another centre. Wesley Bruines was the forgotten man at Saints in 2023. He was named in Paul Wellens’ match day 17 only once - ironically against Warrington - but failed to actually make it on to the field. The 20 year-old only has a one year deal, but will hope to fare better under the Burgess regime.
So Who’s Out?
It’s clearly a blow to lose Clark. So much so that as we have seen not one but two hookers have been recruited despite the fact that Warrington already have Danny Walker looking ready to step in. The bases are covered so long as Dwyer and Sam Powell work out. Peter Mata’utia never really worked out for Wire after following Daryl Powell to Warrington from Castleford in 2022. He was tried in a number of different positions and was average in all of them. He has decided to retire at age 33 after a 12-year career which took in stops at Newcastle Knights, St George-Illawarra Dragons and Leigh as well as Castleford and Warrington. He also played four times for Samoa.
Another former Castleford man who was perhaps less successful at Wire is three-quarter Greg Minikin. Minikin arrived at Wire from Hull KR in 2022 but has managed only 19 appearances, scoring two tries. Still short of his 29th birthday, he nevertheless drops down a division to join Featherstone Rovers.
Prop Thomas Mikaele had a big impact during Wire’s hot start to 2023. Since then he has left the club twice and will start 2024 on the books of North Queensland Cowboys. Mikaele first left Warrington on compassionate grounds but returned in August for the remainder of the season. However he now crosses back to the NRL and leaves a bit of a hole in the front row.
Riley Dean was once a hugely exciting prospect in the halves. Yet the 22 year-old hasn’t really developed as was hoped. He has made only 10 first team appearances in five seasons with Wire during which time he has had loan spells at York, Dewsbury, Newcastle Thunder, Featherstone and Castleford. He now tries a different environment and culture altogether having joined another Queensland Cup side Mackay Cutters.
Not that he will have needed much persuasion but the influx of hookers may have had some part to play in Aiden Doolan’s departure. The youngster is an academy product but has earned the opportunity to prove himself in Australia with Burgess’ old club, South Sydney Rabbitohs. Jack Darbyshire is another academy product moving on as the centre joins Leigh for 2024.
What’s The Expectation?
Depends who you ask. A straw poll among the Wire faithful would probably suggest that competing for the major trophies is the plan. After all it’s only four years since Warrington’s last Challenge Cup win and only eight years since the second of their two League Leaders Shields. There’s something missing in that haul but I can’t for the life of me figure out what it is.
More moderate Wolves might settle for a playoff place as a first target. Once you get there anything is possible. Even if history suggests otherwise.
What Will Really Happen?
There should be no reason why Warrington don’t make the playoffs with the squad they have. The top six is not that big an ask in the current climate. The great unknown is Burgess and how he takes to being the man at the helm rather than an assistant. In that respect he’s not in a dissimilar position to the one which Wellens found himself in when he took over the reins at Saints this time last year. Except that he did so on the back of four Grand Final wins in a row rather than a title drought that’s almost as old as my transplanted kidney.
Wellens had also been at Saints as man and boy whereas Burgess will have to get used to a whole new environment. When he’s done that he’ll have to take on board the fact that he’s now the one responsible for changing the culture at the club and for shaking off the tag of nearly men in a good season and also rans in a bad one.
It would be dangerous and a bit presumptuous to write Warrington off completely but the feeling is that the jump from where they were at the end of 2023 to genuine Grand Final contenders in 2024 is too big for Burgess to make in his first year. It’s not beyond the realms that they could finish higher than the sixth place they managed last year and maybe go a round deeper into the playoffs as a result. And there is always the possibility of a cup win as we saw in 2019. But it’s still hard to see them celebrating with the big prize at Old Trafford.
Probably not their year again then in terms of the Grand Final, but an improvement would not be a surprise.
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