: Mon Feb 23, 2009 10:49 am
Interesting reading the comments on here, I thought when Cullen's name was linked with the job most of the responses would be very negative because of his Wire background, but most of them are quite positive.
My take as a Wire fan:
Under Cullen, Warrington always played an open attacking style of rugby which is good to watch, Phil Clarke was always going on about how there was no attacking side in the league (other than Saints) who could match Warrington at their best. This change in style was apparent from the time he came in, straight away he pulled Graham Appo out of the reserves to give us more speed, encouraged the forwards like Burns to do more with the ball out wide, and signed Wainwright for the start of the next season to give us more offloading capability. Cullen also insisted that when we moved to the HJ stadium, the pitch dimensions were set at the widest possible dimensions to encourage open rugby - he said at the time that if Warrington were to get to major finals they would be played on wide pitches, so we had to be used to playing on that style of pitch.
One point which was less well highlighted was that Cullen cleaned up Warrington's discipline (ironic as that may be). If you look at the penalty conceded tables over the past few years, Leeds were generally the least penalised team in the league, and then it was Warrington. That was a good stat, and since Lowes has taken over I've noticed us being done for conceding lots of stupid penalties at stupid times.
Cullen has an iron-willed determination and his passion for RL is infectious, if he took over as Widnes coach then supporters' nights and forums etc would be well attended and well received. I remember one at Warrington in 2003 when his stock as Wire coach was probably at its highest, when he said it wouldn't make a difference if he was coach of Warrington or Widnes, he would approach the job with exactly the same enthusiasm.
He is also a coach who thinks big in terms of ambition, which is one reason I think he got such a long time at Warrington, because his personality matched Simon Moran's. He was a good figurehead in Warringtons ambitions moving from the smalltime club at Wilderspool to something which aimed to be - even if we haven't delivered it yet - a top club. Big crowds, Andrew Johns, Gleeson, Morley, Rauhihi etc, Warrington became a different club under Cullen. But as well as signing big names, he was willing to promote young players and he gave a lot of Warrington academy lads a chance - Riley, Pickersgill, Harrison being the main ones, plus he was bringing through Cooper, Blythe and co. He tried to pick up young players from other clubs youth systems to give them a shot as well (see Gaskell, Bridge, Bracek)
It also always seemed that he had the dressing room onside, even when we went through bad patches, there were never any grumblings coming out of the camp of discontent with how they were being treated. It was very much Cullen's team and loyal to Cullen.
Now the negatives of Cullen. Some of them are linked to the positives, for instance the one about the dressing room being onside, there were cases where a bit more of the hardline might have been necessary. Some of the players seemed to enjoy the social side of being local celebrities a lot and they got a loose rein, there were a couple who were probably a bad influence on other players and he never stamped down on that part of the culture.
His passion and intensity could make him tetchy, he was sensitive to criticism and you could even see it sometimes if at a supporters night somebody asked the 'wrong' question, he became snappy. When things were going well he was great but when the team was on a bad run he would get grumpy and kick off a lot about different issues to different people at the club, he likes to interfere with things, have his say on how different departments on the non playing side of the club should be run his way. The best coaches exude a calming aura in times of crisis but I don't think you get that with Cullen, he is more likely to explode and the edginess transfers to everybody else.
Similarly his fierce determination can make him stubborn and inflexible, he likes to be in charge and the buck to stop with him, at Warrington he surrounded himself with yes men in his backroom staff. Maybe because of this, Warrington reached a plateau and never improved the problems which became apparent, particularly the defence. Warrington's defence was always well short of the top teams during Cullen's time, (and still evidently is), which meant we were never able to credibly compete. This was apparent early on in Cullen's time but though the personnel changed, and the quality improved significantly, the defensive problems stayed the same. This says to me problems with the coach's structure.
Cullen's Wire were also a soft target for lower ranked teams - to be fair this was a Warrington characteristic well before he took over, but he never sorted it out. The worst thing was, when you could sense early in a game that Warrington weren't up for it today, we could never get to grips and turn it round.
I thought Cullen did well in 2003, and was taking Warrington forward up till about mid 2006 then things started to slide, the turning point for me was a Challenge Cup defeat to Hull KR who were still in the NL at the time, that highlighted some major problems we had, and with hindsight we should have made a change around then, instead of marking time for another two years where we weren't going forwards under Cullen.
when did he get rid of Marion, he never told me that when asking how far was Widnes from his pad in Croft. 
