: Tue Mar 10, 2009 11:55 pm
-VIKINGMAN- wrote:
So he took Warrington from relegation to a top six side and that's considered a failure?
Warrington are still even now another 3 players short of being a side that can win the title.
Cullen took over when they were bottom in May 2002. They finished 2 places off that year, then their record reads:
6th, 8th, 4th, 6th, 7th, 6th.
In that time, they've signed, amongst others, Martin Gleeson for a club record fee reported in the region of £200,000 as well as New Zealand internationals Henry Fa'afili and Logan Swann. Joey Johns played three games for £120,000. Then they signed Andrew Johns, then Adrian Morley, Paul Johnson, and Vinnie Anderson. They've had a multimillionaire backer and a state of the art ground built at Tesco's expense, and have won only one playoff game, never made a semi, let alone a final, not been to Wembley or equivalent since 1990, and only once in 7 years finished in the top five.
Warrington are generally regarded as the great under-achievers of the current era, with Cullen at the helm for longer than any other SL coach yet unable to progress the club further by year seven than he had by the end of year one.
Moreover, my mates at Warrington tell me the coaching staff were extremely divided on his split pivots approach, and that the problems of the club came from certain celebrated senior players and the drinking culture they backed, which the coaching staff were unwilling to bring out in the open for fear of losing the public and, in Cullen's case, the exceptionally lucrative salary he was on.
Cullen is a decent NL1 coach and a decent bloke, but with neither the competence or courage to turn a talented disparate bunch of players into a competitive SL trophy-chasing sides. He might do ok at Widnes, as he did at Whitehaven, but I'd take Kelly (or Tersis or Abram or Benson) over him any day. He's your Darren Shaw. Good luck with that.
