MORE highs and lows than your average rollercoaster, passing through spells of euphoria and desolation along the way.

Just another year in the life of Warrington Wolves…

Unfortunately, doing things serenely just doesn’t appear to be the Wire way and while the 2023 season was nowhere near as disastrous as the one that went before, it still proved to be a lot more difficult than it ought to have been.

It was a year in which Wire roared off the mark by routing the Rhinos, peaked in Perpignan, troughed at Trinity and subsided in St Helens.

Amid all of that was the brutal end of what was supposed to be a brave new era, with club bosses acknowledging they had got it wrong by giving Daryl Powell carte blanche to make the changes he desired to his squad.

In the end, they had little choice but to relieve him of his duties, but many will still wonder how long it will take to repair the damage.

That task now falls upon Sam Burgess – another appointment upon which the club’s decision-makers have staked their reputations – but now the dust is beginning to settle on this year, it is first time to reflect.

On that front, people at every level of the club have questions to answer following a campaign that promised much but once again delivered little.

This has already been touched upon earlier, but it is critical the board reflect upon their decision to go “old-school” and bring Powell in and perhaps more crucially, allow him the level of autonomy he had.

Feathers needed to be ruffled at the time – that is without question – but there was a right and wrong way to do it and this was clearly the latter.

The players too will have to think on their part in why a campaign that started so well was allowed to slide so badly.

Did the saga surrounding Josh McGuire have more of an impact than they have let on? Did Powell “lose the dressing room?”

People will form their own opinions on questions like that and only those within the four walls will truly know the answers.

Will they ever become public? Probably not, but again it is critical that they reflect and grow from the up-and-down nature of the past eight months or so.

The vast majority of them will remain here next year and they must ask themselves the question as to how much enjoying success with this club truly matters to them.

If the answer to that question is not in the affirmative, the great hope of every Wire fan is that Burgess with the support of Gary Chambers in his newly-created director of rugby role will take the necessary action.

Chambers deserves great credit for the way in which he stopped the bleeding and stitched the wounds to get the side through to the end of the year while putting some sort of foundations in place for Burgess to build upon.

The kind of effort they displayed in the season’s final weeks has to be a prerequisite every week going forward. It should have been anyway, but it is a sad indictment of what has gone on over the past couple of years that such a basic fundamental of rugby league has been called into question much more than it should have to be.

They have been shown the way and if they continue on that path, chances of success will no doubt increase.

All of that will start when the players rock back up for pre-season in November but for now, we are left to reflect on a campaign that has probably left more questions than answers.

Another year of being the bridesmaids, and opinions will vary as to whether they are any closer to walking down the aisle as centre of attention.