DARYL Powell has shed light on how difficult it has been in his first season as head coach of Warrington Wolves.
He said decisions he has taken this year fit the brief of his appointment, bringing about changes within the club that will hopefully lead to the holy grail of a Grand Final success.
The Wire, and Powell in his time in charge of Castleford Tigers, have got as close as you can without actually being crowned champions at Old Trafford - by finishing as runners-up.
Both the club's owners and their man at the helm are as motivated as each other in getting over the line.
But most on the outside would laugh at the suggestion at the moment, such has been the woeful 2022 season the fans have had to endure.
The campaign has culminated in fears of a relegation threat, only thwarted by a tough victory over bottom club Toulouse Olympique on Thursday night which has give Warrington six points breathing space going into the final four rounds of the campaign.
Powell can point to Warrington's poor exits from the play-offs since the club's last appearance at Old Trafford in 2018 and just as disappointing defeats in the Challenge Cup since the win against St Helens at Wembley in 2019 as to why he has been tasked with the job of making the tough calls that he believes will make the difference.
Some of this has been since in the huge mid-season turnaround in players, with many more exits expected to come at the season's end.
“It’s been a tumultuous season, for all sorts of reasons," said Powell, 57, a former Great Britain international centre or stand-off who has also had coaching spells at Keighley Cougars, Leeds Rhinos and Featherstone Rovers in rugby league as well as Leeds Tykes in rugby union.
"And...everybody wanted to change, but change brings difficulty, and when some people don’t want to change it brings even more difficulty.
“It’s been a learning experience. I think I will come out of this season, in one season, having learned more than in the rest of my coaching career."
He was about to leave it there and finish the conversion but Warrington Guardian asked him to share more about how hard it has been for him.
“I think it was round six or seven and I was saying to the boys that I’ve never been to a club before where there hasn’t been buy-in almost straight away," he explained.
"I just think there were a lot of people that felt that change didn’t need to happen, but the club brought me in to effect change.
"I don’t need to go into it, but there’s some people who have got strong opinions around the place who didn’t want to do what I was asking them to do. And that is going to create difficulty, and it did, and we’ve seen some of it.
“And then you come to a point, at some point, where you have to say this is what I’m going to do, because if you’re dragging people along with you, that’s hard. If you’ve got people running along with you, then that’s fine.
"But it has been very tough. In all my coaching career I’ve never had a team which has constantly lost games through a lot of the season. I’ve generally helped to be able to create consistent teams. So yeah, it’s been a tough year.”
Although hindsight is now showing that the issues he is dealing with started before his arrival, the impact has hit hard on performances during his watch and he has copped a lot of flak for it - including fans on social media calling for him to resign or be sacked.
We asked how he has been able to deal with that because, in fairness, these are early days in his time as head coach and his focus has been on the long term bigger picture as well as the here and now.
The feeling within is that there is some pain now in order to reach the promised land, but it can be difficult for people to see the vision and believe it when they have felt let down so many times in the past.
“I don’t do social media," said Powell, which, in the circumsatnces, is probably a good thing.
"There was a guy at Huddersfield who came down (to the dug-out area). I think he’d stuck four pieces of paper together to make a sign and it was ‘Powell out’.
"If it costs you £5,000 for a season ticket, I don’t think it gives you the right to abuse me and some of the stuff that I’ve copped.
"Because I’m working hard and I’m doing what I think is right for the club. And in the fullness of time we find that out.
"But I think one year is hard to change something. You can bring different players in, but you can’t change the whole squad.
"It’s been interesting, tough and challenging. But the greatest rewards come from making the biggest changes and getting out of tough situations when every fibre in you is being challenged.
“If we get out of this, and I think we will, and if we win a Grand Final, which I think we will, then it’ll be ‘there you go’.
"When I went up to the fans at Castleford after the game finished, and I don’t mind talking to anybody, there was a fair bit of grief coming to me.
"And I said if you just listen to me, I’ll talk to you. And I was saying ‘Just give me time to change things around because change takes time’.
"And I know those people last year would have been saying the same thing - ‘change has to happen’ because of losing 'this game' and 'that game', and 'big games'.
"I’ll always be prepared to talk to people as long as they don’t throw abuse at me. I’ll listen to anybody and I’ll explain as well as I can, that this is what I believe, this is what I think we should do and this is the way I want to do it.
"I don’t really like abuse because I don’t think it’s necessary. I think just discuss it, and we can agree to disagree.
"I know as head coach at Castleford I wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but I think I showed that what I did was for the right reasons and generally got the best out of people and helped players to grow and prosper.
"And I think I can do that here, given time.”
When he looks back on the season so far he says he still finds it hard to believe how his team lost some of the games that they have lost.
There was a dubious late try awarded that cost them at Hull, a 'world-class' moment of scrambling defence that prevented Connor Wrench scoring what would have been the defining try.
And as injuries as well as the exits and departures have impacted on performances and confidence levels have dropped, there have been so many occasions when The Wire have given up winning positions when they have started to go 'off plan' after suffering in-game setbacks and not dealing with the pressure.
“If you look back through the games we lost, I’m going ‘How did we lose that game? How did we lose that game and how did we lose that game?’," said Powell.
"We should now, I reckon, be pretty nailed inside the top six. We’ve given up six games I reckon which would put us in a great position.
"But the fact remains we haven’t been good enough."
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