On this Justin Holbrook said at a fans forum on Wednesday that he believed Barbs was going wire because you offerd more money and wanted to fly him back into England on a private jet to sort the deal. Says Mike rush sold the club and Ben had always looked out for saints results in SL

I bet if he joined Warrington he would have had the 2017 Christmas Calendar above the mantlepiece.

This was the infamous 'done deal' slant from RD.

Its rumoured that this was one of the driving reasons behind board misgivings over TS.
There has been talks with a few players and alleged gone pearshaped after TS chats.

Yes without a doubt its all about results & performances. As TS always said if we get the performances right then the results will follow.

This season I like every other Wire I want trophies, but being realistic thats probably a bridge too far. If we finish top 4 & give a good account of ourselves in the cup then most fans will accept that. Our best chance of success is the cup but thats dependent on the draw, although in 2016 didn't Hull beat Saints, Cas & Catalans to reach the final ?.

If tonights game is on I think its very important in terms of confidence for the rest of our season that we get a result. At the end of last season I was speaking to Kurt Gidley and he said by game 6 of our losing streak the players confidence had gone and once a players confidence was gone it affected every aspect of their game. We've had a mini revival beating Widnes & Wigan & if we get a result tonight I think it will do wonders for our season. I 100% know tonights game is just 2 points in a long season but to our team it could be much more than that.

I'm with you FB.
If we don't make an account against a busted Dull team and carbon copy Huddersfield.....we can forget winning anything this season.

Why on earth are you expecting us to win anything this season? You don't go from finishing to outside the 8 one year to winning the next, not with our squad anyway.

Leeds did

With our squad?

Leeds the serial SL GF winners cannot be compared with a team that have not won it in 60 years with a crap squad.

Someone needs to tell him this is Super League, not the NR ####ING L.

5 drives and a kick. Dull.

Where in my quote did I say that?

I said a good account of ourselves.
Anyways...give your head a wobble. Leeds did it.

I wish you would stop telling me to give my head a wobble because you are unable to read to the end of a sentence. Leed's would not have won the league [uwith our squad[/u.

You said "you can forget about winning anything this season".

Top 4 is very unlikely. Which of these teams do you think we will finish above: Saints, Leeds, Wigan, Hull, Cas, Wakefield?

Also this business about the players "losing confidence" after a bad run is something we hear a lot at Warrington and it sums up the absence of leadership and mental toughness that hangs round Warrington but not the successful teams. Leeds have won plenty of Grand Finals after having bad patches in seasons, pretty much every year the Leeds forum is full of people calling for change, McDermott out NOW etc. It has also happened to Wigan too a couple of times, where they were hit by injuries and bad form and had to throw in Academy players.

At those clubs, they can weather a bad run and turn things around and win, but Warrington and Warrington players always seem to lack resilience. It was going on back in the Cullen era - we'd get knocked out of the Challenge Cup and then lose the next few games and Cullen would say the Cup result "absolutely knocked the stuffing out of us". How often do you hear the story of a young player at Warrington who got dropped and then it "knocked his confidence", and he ends up disappearing. This doesn't seem to happen to Leeds and Wigan players?

Anyway we are at 2 wins from 5 and next week is Saints so if we lose there it will be 2 from 6. Is there any point watching the rest of the season or are we going to hear all year that those first early results really affected the players and they could never recover. We heard all that positive stuff about the army camp in pre-season and how it was great for building mental toughness, but 24 hours in the freezing rain running up hills with no food is probably easy street compared to being out on a rugby field when you're on a losing run, getting beaten again and booed off at half-time and then ship in more tries in the second half and a chorus of boos and heckles rings round the terraces.

Bang on this. Mental toughness. For some of the players it may be too late to instill that. Smith had an excuse culture and that is ingrained.

As an interesting aside Wigan were 16 - 4 down against Widnes yesterday at halftime. They won the 2nd half 28-0. We couldn't do that.

As for us, I was expecting 3/6 but it looks like 2. League position 6-9 still looks likely.

Well if we get stuffed by Stains Price can go for me there and then and take Roberts with him!

Well,that was a very short honeymoon.

Well it might be next weekend.

Zero attack in the 1st 40 mins (5 drives and kick, at best), giving away multiple daft penalties like messing in the tackle...a Hill special and inability to ptb clean. and exhausting energy defending.
There isn't a team now that doesn't know us inside out.

Managing any side (but particularly one that's had a shocking last season) should start with sorting the defence out first and build from there. It's clear that the defence has improved and I'm pretty confident the attack will get a lot better...likely not enough for top 4/6 this season but carry on improving then add a bit more quality next season and we'll be reet. However we really should've got rid of Smith the same time saints got rid of Cunningham but no point moaning. Give Price (and Roberts) some time.

Look how bad Wigan were last year & just scraped into the play offs in front of us so there is still everything to play for.

As a club, we're TOO nice. Always have been.
We've never been ruthless, either on or off the pitch. We're too loyal.
Look at Ferguson in football. If he saw a player who'd outgrown his usefulness to the side (Beckham, Van Nistelroy, Stam, NevilleP, Butt, Solskjear, etc) they were gone. We keep offering pensioners new contracts(Westwood, who's last decent season was about 5 years ago, and Briers, who, if he wasn't told to retire immediately, would've still been playing for us, years later).

Look at our coaches over the last 30 odd years
Bowden, in over his head
Barrow, buffoon
Johnno, too nice
Dorahay, waste of space
DVDV bang average
No comment on Anderson Plane
Cullen, one of the lads
Lowes, buffoon/nob/
Smith, successful for us, but a walking social worker
Price, too early to say, but looks like another Aussie droid.
There's barely an ounce of menace to any of them, bar Cullen and Lowes on field reputations.
Contrast this to Wane. His players would walk over broken glass for him. Maybe a rule by fear man, but he has "presence". That game @HJ in 16, when they were about 12 points down with 15 minutes to go, and had Flower sent off. Don't get me started on 13's GF debacle. Mental toughness.
Mcdermott too. Comes over as quite level headed, but I bet no-one at Leeds would DARE cross him. He'd just take them outside, and slowly dismember them.
Serial GF winner, when they were poop, earlier in each season. Mental toughness, again.

Until we change our outlook, we'll just coast along as usual. Maybe the odd cup, but never kicking on. Typical Wire.

Didn't Tony Barrow take us to winning the Premiership v Halifax at Eland Road ?
Not bad for a 'buffoon'

yes with sir les as assistant coach,,totally dis agree with the bufoon statement

Tony Barrow was an honest guy.
Perhaps the club should have backed him better.

Lets give Tony Barrow the same test we gave Tony Smith.

Did he win enough silverware, with the players he had at his disposal?

Many Wire fans will tell you that was the best Warrington squad of the modern era and could have beaten the TS team.

Our defence is looking much better, and as a team we're much more aggressive in defence compared to under Smith in his last few seasons. This is an indicator that they are listening to price.

Our attack is a worry but it's not as concerning as our defence has been previously

A new coach and few new players won't all of a sudden ha e us tearing up super league time will be needed, would we be in a better position had we brought in price midway through last year almost certainly a yes. But to expect more or for us to be scoring for fun is realistic especially as those doing it mainly bemoaned the quality of or squad lady year which has not drastically changed that we should expect drastically different results.....

Price and hendo have one hell of a job on their hands and we knew this before a ball was played again those who are bemoaning the situation often stated the mess Smith has left us in will take more than one reason to put right but a handful of games in an its all doom n gloom price n Roberts can go lol