sally cinnamon:Wires71:matt_wire:
I really don't know why people slag off Price. Two cup finals and a grand final ain't a bad return. And one of those involved stuffing saints without our (apparently) most dangerous player on the day. Unless we reach both finals this year, and win one, Price actually did better than SB.
First season - good progress made both finals, 2nd season CC win, but it was blowing out of the playoffs at home 3 times in a row 2019/20/21 to Castleford, Hull and Hull KR which probably left an air of disappointment. People forget this.
Expectations were higher then I think. Seems to me a run to the final in the Challenge Cup is good enough for most now.
I always expected Price's reputation to get better with the passing of time when people forget what it was like.
If you just look in the record books, he had 4 years, got to 3 finals, won a Challenge Cup and had league finishes of 4th twice and 3rd twice. In terms of league position that's the only time apart from 2010-13 under TS that we've been top 4 for four consecutive seasons. We were garbage the year before he took over (TS last season) and we were even worse the year after he left (Powell's first). So on paper he was pretty good in the history of Wire coaches.
But that doesn't tell you the full story. It's like when you see that table of most successful England football coaches by win percentage and Fabio Capello is top.
Price had four years but only really about one and a half where the fans were feeling good. That first year as Wires71 says was good progress given where we were the year before. Price brought better organisation and a defensive toughness. The black mark against that season was the Wembley final against Catalans when we took 20 minutes to get off the bus and the game was gone.
Then in Price's second year we won 11 of our first 14 SL games then 5 of the last 15. That halfway point of the second year was the turning point in the whole Price era. Our Challenge Cup win came in that second half, and the win in the final against Saints was IMO the greatest 'big game' performance I've ever seen from Wire, given the occasion, the opposition, the pressure we withstood. Absolutely incredible. But a week or two after that win there were already people on here saying the Challenge Cup had 'papered over the cracks' and Price had taken us as far as he could. You could see we were in a spiral that we couldn't get out of. Blake Austin had started that season like a house on fire and was front runner for Man of Steel at the half way point then teams worked him out and that massively neutered our attack.
The third and fourth year were a bit weird because of covid, we had a decent winning run when games restarted after the first lockdown and were played in front of empty stadiums but we never looked like we were in the calibre of Saints or Wigan or Catalans and we went down easily in the first round of the playoffs. That happened to us three times in a row and by the end we had low expectations of doing anything in the playoffs.
The rugby wasn't very exciting under Price either but the most frustrating thing was that after half way through his second year we never looked like we had anything new. We knew when we came up against somebody good we'd fall short. We knew if we went behind in a game we wouldn't come back. We had good enough players to win more games than we lost but there was no Plan B against a team who had worked us out.
The Cullen era was far more enjoyable than the Price era despite the results on paper not being as good. We had a few games every year where Wilderspool or the HJ was rocking and we'd win playing exciting rugby against a top team. We never had any memorable moments under Price apart from that backs to the wall win at Wembley.
Excellent post. Spot on with the analysis of the first 18 months vs the last 30 months. In that latter period you just knew we were not of the standard to win the title or even compete in the pressure games and you just had to wait until the board realised that too. In the end they just let his contract run out. Dull rugby and no hope of winning the prize. I think the players also chose their games then too.
The truth is that Price was just not very good. He got sacked from st george Illawarra after 2 years losing 2/3rds of his games, then a whole 4 years with us and that was the end of his head coaching career. His results in the final 2 1/2 years were poor and so was his legacy in terms of squad and young player progression.
We should have sacked him after blowing out of the playoffs at home, in identical circumstances for a 2nd time running in September 2020. This isn't hindsight as I said the same at the time.
