It’s bold, it’s audacious, it’s frankly quite stunning. It’s the appointment of current Australian Test Head Coach Kevin Walters as Saints Head Coach from the start of the 2027 season.
Walters has agreed a three-year deal to take over the reins
after the troubled tenure of Paul Rowley and the current interim period under
Eamon O’Carroll. He will join at the end
of the 2026 World Cup which takes place in Australia and Papua New Guinea in
October and November.
When Rowley left and with recruitment having been at a
distinctly Poundland level during his tenure there were concerns over Saints’
financial health. Yet it is hard to
imagine that a coach with such lofty status comes cheaply. And on a three-year deal which is quite a
commitment. That bastion of truth Love
Rugby League reports that the deal is worth £1million over the three years.
Perhaps the prospect of a cash injection from the NRL has
convinced the owners to dig deep in the belief that it will all work out
swimmingly. That deal with the world’s
premier rugby league competition isn’t done yet so fingers crossed that the
club isn’t being placed in financial peril in the meantime. The contrast between this reportedly lavish
spend and some of the recent recruitment would seem stark.
Assuming it is an expensive move and given his standing in
the game there will be pressure on Walters to turn around our ailing ship. General consensus among fans I have chatted
to and tweeted with is that it will take around three years to put out the
binfire that is the make up of our squad.
So anyone expecting Grand Final triumph in 2027 might have to hold their
proverbial jets.
A lot also rests on whether Walters will have full control
over recruitment. This has been the one
area which Saints have made an absolute dog’s dinner of in recent seasons. Rowley must have had some control judging by
the number of ex-Salford players who arrived just before and just after his
appointment. On that basis – and if
spending is now our thing – it is reasonable to expect Walters’ contacts book
to provide one or two more encouraging additions. Reece Walsh is probably already looking at
properties in Fingerpost as I write.
Yet even a State Of Origin and Kangaroo coach can’t overhaul
the squad as quickly as we would like.
Some of our less successful recruits have every right to be nervous, but
whoever was appointed was always going to have to list pragmatism and patience
among his qualities. Many of our
underperforming players are sitting on contracts which they won’t be willing to
give up easily. Walters’ success or
otherwise should probably be judged on improvement year on year rather than on
how many pots end up in the cupboard. That
will be seen as negativity from some, but it feels like that is just where we
are at the moment.
Walters has coached in Super League before. After a long spell as an assistant at
Brisbane Broncos under Wayne Bennett and two years as head coach of Ipswich
Jets in the Queensland Cup he took over at Catalans Dragons in 2009. He made the playoffs with the French outfit
in the mediocrity rewarding days of a top eight playoff system, but won only six
out of 27 games in his second and final season in Perpignan. Objectively that is terrible, but it should
be remembered that the Dragons had been a Super League entity for only three
years before his arrival. And few have
managed to turn them into a force in the league. Steve McNamara led them to a Challenge Cup
victory in 2018 and the League Leaders Shield in 2021 but outside of that they
have been a byword for underachievement.
More time spent as an assistant – this time with Melbourne Storm
– was followed by another stint working under Bennett at Newcastle
Knights. This is where it gets
complicated. His record as a head coach
was pretty underwhelming at that point but it did not stop him from being
appointed as the head coach of the Queensland State Of Origin team when Saints
icon Mal Meninga left to coach the Australian national team in 2015. Walters won a couple of series’ against the
Blues of New South Wales in four attempts before being appointed head coach of
the Broncos in 2020.
Star power seems to have been a huge help to Walters in
terms of his coaching career. He has
close to 300 NRL/ARL appearances to his name as a player, featuring 20 times
for Queensland and 11 times for Australia.
He even managed four games for Warrington, which is proof if you require
it that his is a massive name. Nobody
likes a famous recruit more than the Wire.
He’s had success as a coach but it is fair to suggest that it hasn’t
always been that which has landed him the huge jobs he has held.
Before his appointment as the Kangaroos coach his last big
achievement at club level was guiding the Broncos to the 2023 Grand Final. But even that is tinged with
tragicomedy. Leading 24-8 going into the
final quarter of the game the Broncos contrived to lose 26-24 to serial NRL
winners Penrith Panthers. A year after
Walters departed the Broncos they won a Grand Final under architect of Wigan
shithousery Michael Maguire. But a quick
glance at the current NRL table shows that Maguire’s champion team are above
only hapless St George-Illawarra.
Successful coaches can oversee the odd abomination in the cutthroat environment
of the NRL.
Walters is seemingly a players’ coach rather than laying claim to any level of tactical genius. His previous experience working with Lee Briers is a fascinating dynamic. Briers went up in all of our estimations by leaving Wigan for the Broncos in 2022 where he worked under Walters for three seasons.
Briers’ reputation as an attack
coach flourished, but has stalled back in his home town under
Rowley and previously Paul Wellens.
Perhaps this is the appointment that Briers needs to finally bring his
ideas to fruition. But again, we keep
coming back to it, he will need some better players and that will take time.
Positivity vacuums abound among the Saints fan base
particularly on social media. But even
they should recognise that this is an ambitious, exciting appointment. Any new
coach should be backed until they give you reason to do otherwise, but there
seems more reason than usual to employ some cautious optimism around
Walters. Securing one of the biggest
names in the game has arguably erased any doubts about how big a deal Saints
are despite their whiffy league position.
Things are looking up, aren’t they?
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