I can't complain with the process of appointing Powell. I wanted him to be our coach after Tony Smith and was pleased we brought him in. I thought a rebuild was long overdue so it was right to give him that brief.

2022 was obviously very turbulent and it was hard for Powell to keep the dressing room but that was necessary medicine, the key thing was to get a new set of players with the right attitude who would work in Powell's system.

The real killer was we brought in inferior players to the ones we moved out and they didn't even have any better attitudes so we got worse problems this year which made Powell's position untenable and makes it really hard now for us to rebuild the squad again with players under contract.

Perhaps Powell's best days as a coach were already behind him by the time we brought him in, or maybe we just really messed up the recruitment.

I'm not too optimistic about Sam Burgess and think we will go through more turmoil ahead. Looking at Burgess' recent history in the NRL he seems to be quite hot headed and I can see an explosion early on if he gets to Wire and finds a lot of players going through the motions. Whilst a lot of our fans will probably say, good, what they need is a coach who doesn't indulge them and will not be afraid to call them out, we could soon end up in another situation with a dressing room being resistant to the coach and Burgess has enough contacts in the NRL that he can easily say "stuff this I'm not wasting my time with these losers" sooner than we expect.

But time will tell.

Maybe Peanut was just too brittle at this stage of his career?

We never really got to see Peanut butter the opposition.

If only Ratchford had the nickname “Jelly” I believe they are a highly rated combination

And so a very long day comes to an end…

That’s my point though, we’ve signed 9 props in 2 years, and retained Philbin. That was because the middle was our weakness. But we’ve actually gone backwards. Missing Vaughan is huge, but Mikaele has been lacklustre at best since he returned.

We absolutely have seen the best that Currie has to offer, behind a decent pack. And he’s been held to that regard since. The point is, if his job is to create width and to be a dynamic back rower, not an extra prop, then he is doing that. The issue is we’re not on the front foot, have no momentum and can’t manipulate numbers or make space because the middle is getting bullied.