Is Sam Burgess becoming part of the saga of all that’s toxic over the decades at Warrington?


His honeymoon period is running close on dry, if not already over, imo. 
I’m already getting weary of him since preseason. 


He does what he likes, without regard the effects it has upon the club. 


I hope he can get the poo together before Wembley and get us the win.
Failing that, I’d be prepared to just let him go to Aus. His reluctance to dismiss the rumour is parading Warrington yet again as a circus.

He was always a gamble appointment and he had a strong 2024 in the league. I was a huge fan. I was hoping we would build on that for 2025 but that's not to be. 


Anyone else in their 2nd year seeing us in 9th place and 30 -40 point batterings would have real pressure on them. The cup final is the saving grace I guess. 


I lost a bit of respect for him for his petulant, sulky treatment to journalists when they were questioning the Vegas debacle. Grow up, he is representing OUR club with 100 years+ of history on national TV. 


I lost a bit more respect with him openly giving press statements on the Perth job when Arthur tipped his hat in the ring a few weeks ago. He could have not done that. If asked he could have easily said "I'm not discussing rumours or speculation, I came here to do a job and I'm 100% focused on that". But he didn't. 


Finally his monosyllabic post match comments lack insight, are repetitive and poorly communicated. 


He can go at the end of 2025 for me, good luck to him. I don't think we are missing out on a "must keep" coaching genius are we? 

I think it's lack of experience and i think he's constantly doubting and second guessing himself.
His signings for this year have left us weaker, but i think in his head the players he's signed were going to jump up a few levels and be great, but now they've not he's just stumped.
Last year he did really well but the recruitment has shown he's a bit clueless when he doesn't have the top players to win us games.
If we win the challenge cup, once he's gone that's all people will remember, and to be fair you could claim would be a successful stint as coach here.
If we get one more solid hard hitting forward, and second rower and Wrench finds form and develops more, with Walker, Williams, Ashton and a fully fit not injured Fitz, we're looking a hell of a lot stronger.
Speaking of Burgess, just watched a video on Youtube of him when he was on SAS tough enough Australia.
They were at the end and it was the standard Ambush, but Burgess told some of the crew to get out and hijacked the van.
He was halfway to Sydney when they had to do a forced stop to get them back ha ha ha

I didn't like his appointment. I still don't like his appointment. We've been no different under him. We're no better with defensive resilience, our attack is still largely woeful. We're near the bottom of the table almost halfway through the season and Burgess doesn't seem to give a sht. What happened to everyone crowing about his winning mentality? He clearly can't instill that in those around him because we had better resilience under Price. I'm not even bothered about the CC now. Hanging our hat on that is poor, we've done it 4 times and been there 8 times in a couple weeks. We expect a coach who can deliver us a Grand Final.

We became a circus when we recruited him. 


We were a circus because we over achieved under him last year. 


We're a circus now because we're struggling and he's rumoured to be leaving. 


Honestly I don't think we lose out if he goes back to Aus in October. 


What happened to "players running through walls" for him? 


The lustre definitely seems to have worn away.


I genuinely fear for what happens post Wembley, win or loss. 

Good and bad points as you might expect from a young inexperienced coach. Consistency is the main issue along with recruitment. On the credit side I think he does get more out of the players than Price or Powell probably on the back of his reputation and persona. Our record against St Helens and general performance in 2024 is evidence enough. 
Upgrading the Academy at last is clearly the best way forward but it won’t work with recruitment mistakes. Sneyd and Yates are good experienced professionals and a couple of good overseas recruits would have made us serious challengers. You would have thought that Burgess would have been in a position to know young and established players in Australia but he couldn’t manage it. Musgrove had previous which he must have known about and to choose him over Ese’Ese is a shocker. 
In defence, no team can maintain form with the number of long term injuries to key players - Wigan slumped last year without Field and French.
Whenever he leaves it’s Paul Rowley for me - good record, gets the best out of players and plenty of experience. 
One thing for sure, we can’t afford recruitment mistakes for 2026.

I don't think Rowley is the answer. What's he ever won? 

When did Wigan slump in 2024?  I see they lost back to back games in July (Hull Away then Wire home) after winning eight on the bounce, then after these losses won eight out of nine?  

I wish we could slump like that.  

Might have been 2023.

Rowley has coached Leigh, Toulouse and Salford. What has Willie Peters ever won ? You could have said the same about Matt Peet.

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 thereAs 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