sally cinnamon:
The appointment always had a short-term feeling to it. Either it would go well and he'd get an NRL job after a couple of years, or it would flame out and we'd be looking to move on.
There were some reasons why you could justify taking a punt on Burgess. He's a very driven individual with high standards. He was a great player and a legend in Australia where he dominated the best league in the world for a decade. One of the problems we had was an unruly dressing room where players didn't seem to respect Price or Powell, but the generation of today's players have grown up seeing Burgess as a superstar so there was no doubt he would command respect from day one. He's a winner and leader which is something we've lacked.
There were two big downsides. One is his short coaching apprenticeship. He was a first time head coach who would be making his mistakes in real time with us. The other is he tends to bring chaos with him. You could see that from his time in Australia and also in rugby union. He ruffles feathers and falls out with people. There are two sides to every story so I don't take at face value what was said about him by certain people in England RU, or South Sydney, or his ex wife or how the media reported that case. But some people just attract controversy and conflict and I'm not sure that's what you want in a head coach of a team.
But the choice of coach disguises a bigger problem. Our recruitment has been poor for a long time. Do we honestly think we'd be where Hull KR are if we had appointed Willie Peters? This is not due to one coach it has spanned multiple coaches. At the end of the Price era it was clear the squad needed a major overhaul and Powell was brought in to oversee a clear out. That was the right decision but we managed to put together a much weaker squad than Price had had which meant Powell and now Burgess were massively handicapped.
Sally you have nailed the coaching appointment of Sam Burgess by Warrington there
As an outsider looking in
I'm a massive fan of Sam the player by the way too.
Sam clearly had a very good first season coaching at the Wolves.
But has he got the nous to build a successful squad rather just motivating the squad that he has inherited?
At present his skillset looks far more likely to be successful by coaching England in a 3 game series,Rather than actually building a squad capable of winning a GF at Warrington
