BY JOHN DAVIDSON
Warrington Wolves CEO Karl Fitzpatrick has spoken about the club’s frustrating 2025 season, insisting that changes have been made for the new campaign, with potentially more recruits to come.
Warrington were one of the biggest disappointments in Super League, finishing eighth and winning just 10 of 27 games.
The Wolves missed out on the playoffs, lost the Challenge Cup final to Hull KR and were even defeated at home by financially beleaguered Salford Red Devils.
Pressure was ramped up on coach Sam Burgess, who led Warrington to third place and a Wembley final appearance in 2024 in his first year in charge.
There has been a significant overhaul in both the playing squad and the coaching staff in recent weeks, with assistant coach Martin Gleeson departing and former Catalans and England head coach Steve McNamara appointed.
“It was obviously a very challenging, very disappointing season,” Fitzpatrick told rugbyleaguehub.com Long Reads.
“But we’ve learnt a lot of lessons this year, we’ve drawn a line under it and we move forward positively.
“There’s been some real key changes. I think Steve McNamara coming in is going to be fantastic. He’s going to provide that mature, experienced support for Sam.
“We’ve analysed it and we understand why some of it happened last year. We’ve made a number of changes on the playing front as well, so we’re looking forward to a much-improved season in 2026.”
Eleven first-team players have departed, including Paul Vaughan, Stefan Ratchford and Lachlan Fitzgibbon, while six new players have come in.
Signings Toafofoa Sipley and Albert Hopaote have arrived from the NRL and Liam Byrne and James Bentley have joined from Wigan and Leeds respectively.
Warrington is still in the market for more new signings.
“There may be a couple of more,” Fitzpatrick admitted.
“The news with Tevita Pangai Jr recently does open up another spot. We are looking for further recruits but it has to be the right player and the right person.
“So Gary and Sam will be looking at that, they’ll be analysing the market. There’s no one immediately in mind to come in, but hopefully someone will come up.”
The future of fullback Matt Dufty also remains unresolved, with the Australian linked with an exit.
Fitzpatrick said Warrington have not set specific targets for on the field in 2026 yet.
“That’s something that we’ve not really spoken about in detail yet,” he said.
“Obviously, improvement goes without saying. We have to improve on last year – and everyone knows that. We drastically underperformed compared to where we expect at this club.
“But I don’t want to put too much pressure on and saying this is where we need to be.”
Warrington have promoted a number of youngsters to their first-team squad, with halfback Euan Irwin given shirt number 18, centre Zack Gardiner 29, prop Tom McKinney 30, hooker Ben Hartill 31, utility Eqan Smith 32 and halfback Tommy Rhodes 33.
Fullback Cai Taylor-Wray has also been given the number 1 shirt.
“A positive from this season gone has been our youth,” Fitzpatrick said.
“We made a strategic decision to really invest in that area a number of years ago and that’s really bearing fruit. They’ve been over in Australia and beat Penrith, drew with NSW, a number of those are going to come into the first-team squad.
“We’re supporting our youth, but we need to be patient with them. They’re going to get some things wrong but we believe in them, and we believe in time they’re going to be top, top players.
“We want sustained success and you look at a lot of the clubs that have had that – Wigan, Leeds, St Helens, you look over at the NRL and Penrith recently – it’s been built on homegrown talent and we knew this was going to take time.
“But we’re starting to see the green shoots when they came in this year. That’s a really important part of the club’s strategy now is promoting the youth and believing in the youth, that’s something we’ve probably not been great at in the past.
“That’s one thing Sam does, he gives youth a chance.”
