The idea of a bad dressing room culture has been around in Wire for a while now.
In the DVDV era, we had a "spice boys" culture, players out in Mr Smiths, stories of shenanigans in pre season tours to Lanzarote. The senior players, especially the overseas signings, seemed to be driving this, which makes it very difficult for a coach to control.
Cullen had to deal with some of that as well. I remember during lockdown he did that podcast with Wood and Higham where he talked about his time as coach and having to compromise with the dressing room culture because a couple of the key players who he needed onside were the ones at the heart of it.
In the early years of TS that seemed to have cleaned up. Probably because the players we had were much more professional. We had senior players like Morley, Hodgson, Monaghan setting the tone.
Towards the end of TS's time though you could sense the dressing room was becoming harder to police. Early in his last season there were lots of stories on here about some of the young players directly confronting TS and whilst we don't know if those stories were true, it definitely seemed like those players had their "supporters" on here updating us with lots of gossip from inside the dressing room to stir up support for their cause.
The team seemed to be more together for a while under Price but I wonder if that was because Price indulged them a bit. The clip of Cooper jostling him was an eye opener, even if we want to brush it under the carpet as "its just his competitive edge"...I can't imagine any Leeds player doing that to Brian McDermott or Wigan player doing that to Wane.
Then Powell came in and last year clearly clashed with a lot of players who didn't approve of his methods - which is fair enough when you're here to change a culture. But the fact that we brought in a new crop of players who now have their own grievances is very disappointing.
It's a long term problem that the club needs to get on top of. I think they need to be much better at making decisions on new recruits based on character and professionalism.
Challenge Cup winners 2009 2010 2012 2019 League Leaders 2011 2016
All this talk of dressing room unrest, player welfare and split dressing rooms makes me nostalgic for the good old days when they'd sort their grievances in Time Square mediated by Mr Greenalls.
Our team meetings of late must resemble group therapy Tuesday at The Priory.
Wires71 wrote:If we get Holbrook and STILL have the issues with attitude, flaky performances, and petulant players then we will know that we are truly beyond help.
The thing is, I thought the same thing when we brought in Powell. I don't think Holbrook will change anything on his own, he'll just be the next scapegoat.
Of course, the likelihood is that Holbrook won't even be coming. It's a mess, and I think poor Chambers will be Plange Mk.2.
Joined: Jun 25 2006 Posts: 14097 Location: Forum21
sally cinnamon wrote: It's a long term problem that the club needs to get on top of. I think they need to be much better at making decisions on new recruits based on character and professionalism.
We've already got that nailed haven't we?
The Chancer wrote:He insisted: “The big things we looked at this year are character and leadership qualities.
“Were the new players aligned with the culture we want to create? The first thing was, ‘What’s their character like?’ We’re seeing that.
sally cinnamon wrote: It's a long term problem that the club needs to get on top of. I think they need to be much better at making decisions on new recruits based on character and professionalism.
We've already got that nailed haven't we?
The Chancer wrote:He insisted: “The big things we looked at this year are character and leadership qualities.
“Were the new players aligned with the culture we want to create? The first thing was, ‘What’s their character like?’ We’re seeing that.
morrisseyisawire wrote:If it is the case that the players have engineered Powell's exit (and the evidence suggests this) then one thing may have eluded the priviledged little mercenaries.
They are now on their own.
Unless they massively turn things round, starting with Catalans, and produce the performances in evidence at the start of the season for the remainder of the season then there is no-one left to blame.
It's on them. They got a bad coach, but a decent man, the sack.
Nowhere to hide anymore.
Totally agree about the players, I don't think Powell is a bad coach at all though, just not the right one to fix the mess that we as a club were/ are in.
I hope he gets another club and does well there, no hard feelings from me. He did his best, just wasn't a match the board let it go on for too long which is unfortunate.
Joined: Jun 25 2006 Posts: 14097 Location: Forum21
CW8 wrote:Totally agree about the players, I don't think Powell is a bad coach at all though, just not the right one to fix the mess that we as a club were/ are in.
I hope he gets another club and does well there, no hard feelings from me. He did his best, just wasn't a match the board let it go on for too long which is unfortunate.
CW8 wrote:Totally agree about the players, I don't think Powell is a bad coach at all though, just not the right one to fix the mess that we as a club were/ are in.
I hope he gets another club and does well there, no hard feelings from me. He did his best, just wasn't a match the board let it go on for too long which is unfortunate.
sally cinnamon wrote:The idea of a bad dressing room culture has been around in Wire for a while now.
In the DVDV era, we had a "spice boys" culture, players out in Mr Smiths, stories of shenanigans in pre season tours to Lanzarote. The senior players, especially the overseas signings, seemed to be driving this, which makes it very difficult for a coach to control.
Cullen had to deal with some of that as well. I remember during lockdown he did that podcast with Wood and Higham where he talked about his time as coach and having to compromise with the dressing room culture because a couple of the key players who he needed onside were the ones at the heart of it.
In the early years of TS that seemed to have cleaned up. Probably because the players we had were much more professional. We had senior players like Morley, Hodgson, Monaghan setting the tone.
Towards the end of TS's time though you could sense the dressing room was becoming harder to police. Early in his last season there were lots of stories on here about some of the young players directly confronting TS and whilst we don't know if those stories were true, it definitely seemed like those players had their "supporters" on here updating us with lots of gossip from inside the dressing room to stir up support for their cause.
The team seemed to be more together for a while under Price but I wonder if that was because Price indulged them a bit. The clip of Cooper jostling him was an eye opener, even if we want to brush it under the carpet as "its just his competitive edge"...I can't imagine any Leeds player doing that to Brian McDermott or Wigan player doing that to Wane.
Then Powell came in and last year clearly clashed with a lot of players who didn't approve of his methods - which is fair enough when you're here to change a culture. But the fact that we brought in a new crop of players who now have their own grievances is very disappointing.
It's a long term problem that the club needs to get on top of. I think they need to be much better at making decisions on new recruits based on character and professionalism.
Good post as usual.
Regarding the highlighted point, this season anyway, the team spirit appeared to be strong up until the Mcguire thing. I don't know the ins and outs of this bar an apparent split in the camp, but this would surely have been outside of Powell's control.
It hasn't obviously worked for Powell but I do feel for him a bit as the cards have been stacked against him since arriving (though he knew they would be) and that Mcguire scenario completely dashed any prospect of building on our early strong start.
How is the new coach going to resolve the split in the camp? It looks like Powell didn't have the interpersonal skills to sort this and if it isn't sorted, then we aren't going to go anywhere with this side.
Joined: Jul 17 2015 Posts: 4668 Location: Sitting on the naughty step
My take on it is that Powell just wasn’t up to the job. His (limited) success at Cas was based on building a team from players that he had “rescued” and they owed him a huge amount of personal loyalty which he reciprocated. At Wire he was dealing with players with totally different motivations (both from him and each other) and he did not have the skills to meld them together. So while things briefly went well all was good but at the first sign of inter camp problems he didn’t know what to do. Middletown’s interview in the WG makes it clear that Powell was given carte Blanche to get rid of players and recruit new ones. So the players he was slagging off in his final interview were players he chose and he wanted. Now we can criticise the club for giving him that power but there was a very strong feeling on here that player recruitment should come from the coach not the CEO. So if we wanted that how can we then criticise? I now don’t buy the “bad apple” excuse re Cooper and Charnley. I suspect they saw the Emperor’s new clothes for what they were. These were highly experienced senior professionals with international experience, coached by any number of coaches with never a hint of being a problem. So we are back to square 1 if not worse and much of that is down to Powell. Not too much sympathy from me I’m afraid.
Just my opinions unless it's a FACT, in which case it's a fact.
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