Ok what about the decision to sign him in the first place? Was that Karl or Powell because whoever took that decision deserves to come under some scrutiny. They signed a bloke who had one of the worst disciplinary records ever in the NRL and now we’re getting rid of him because of further disciplinary issues. Both Powell and Karl told us that McGuire had great leadership skills.

That's hilarious ... was it April 1st ?

That's the unknown, million dollar question on here, isn't it?

Fitzpatrick is often cited as being the man who seeks out targets and I suspect, especially with overseas players, he will be the man who will be getting approached by Aussie agents looking to get their man a payday in SL.

I'd reckon it's not 100% on either of them, but Fitzpatrick probably has control over the purse strings over Powell, so likely has the final say from a Powell approved list?

If someone in my team at work does something ridiculous and brings the whole organisation into disrepute, that's on them. If I bring them back into the team, tell my bosses they've learned their lesson, and they go and do the exact same thing, I'm going to be answering some very difficult questions.

The stuff about me being desperate for Powell to go is deranged. I'm absolutely desperate for it all to work but I'm starting to fear the worst.

This change of culture has clearly worked.

A lot of fans on here were calling for McGuire to be made team captain.

Certainly there has been a change of heart by people now criticising his recruitment now.........

What final position this season would you consider it not working then?

It seems to me that many people have got into their heads that anything less than a GF win would be seen as a failure and that Powell's position would come under serious consideration, when, in reality, that is a bit of a nonsense.

I didn't expect us to win a GF this year. It was obvious that our squad lacked enough depth and quality in the back row and the centres before a ball was kicked, and I said so at the start of the year. Before the season I'd have said we needed to get into the top 4/5 to show the Powell project was progressing.

Clearly that's where we are now. But the direction of travel is as important as the final league position. If we scrape along to a top half finish winning 40% of games from here on in, that will look like a success but the start we had is going to mask over a lot of issues. We can choose to recognise that or ignore it

Similar to what browny said, at the moment we seem (to me at least) to be in the early stages of slipping, a la 2019 after we won the cup, and for most ppl thats where our most recent malaise began.

Yes first half this year has been a massive improvement over last year, but if drop like a loving stone for the rest of this season, that's a huuuge problem for powell

I'm in that space too. We're higher up the ladder than most people expected. If we'd had 4 from 8 at the start, I don't think we'd be expecting to go 7 unbeaten, so we'd have ended up lower down the ladder.

We really do need to win the next three (against 10th, 11th and 8th) to show that the first 7 weren't a fluke.