Daryl Powell says his Warrington Wolves players need to be “singing from the same hymn sheet” next season.
Powell is two weeks into his first pre-season as head coach at the Wolves, having made the switch from Castleford Tigers after more than eight seasons in charge there.
The 56-year-old, who has also led Keighley Cougars, Leeds Rhinos and Featherstone Rovers during his coaching career, joins a club that has regularly fought for major honours in the past decade.
Powell has had plenty of duels with Warrington, not least his final game in charge of the Tigers, where defeat to the Wire ended their play-off hopes.
Reflecting on his past experiences grappling with the Wolves and what he takes from them into the new job, he said: “I think the quality of player has always been difficult to deal with.
“Individually we’ve got an outstanding group of players. The job is to collectively improve the group and make sure we’re all singing from the same hymn sheet.
“There’s a couple of areas that I think we can really improve as we go through the pre-season.”
Not all the squad have been able to get stuck in just yet though – far from it, with Powell revealing that just 20 of his players were able to train in the first week.
New signings James Harrison and Greg Minikin will miss the opening months of the season and another newcomer, Joe Bullock, will not be able to start until January.
Others, including Stefan Ratchford, Daryl Clark and Toby King, have been completing recoveries, while Gareth Widdop is in Australia with family and is not expected back until after Christmas.
It is far from the start Powell would like in pre-season but he says that there has been one benefit to the slimmer group as he has been impressed by some of the younger squad members.
“It’s not ideal but it does give you a chance to see a lot of the younger players with a bit more space,” he said.
“Normally you’d have 30-32 players training and we’ve got 20 players, so you get to know players a little bit more, especially those younger players.
“There are some class young players who are showing up pretty well, people like Matty Ashton, Connor Wrench and others. Those guys will benefit the most from this early part of pre-season.”
Meanwhile, former Warrington player Tyrone McCarthy has returned to the club as their assistant Academy and lead Scholarship coach.
McCarthy, who came through the Wolves Academy to win three Challenge Cups, said: “Some of the experiences I’ve had of coming through the system here hopefully I can now share those with the current players and help them along the way.
“I’ve been preparing to step into a coaching role for most of my career so hopefully it’s a smooth transition.”
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