New Warrington Wolves head coach Daryl Powell is the focus of this week's Prior to Wire picture feature...

DARYL Powell's professional rugby league career goes back to 1984.

Warrington Wolves' new head turned professional with Sheffield Eagles, for whom he was one of their most influential players for 11 years.

He had guest spells in that period in Australia with Balmain Tigers and Gold Coast Seagulls, while he finished his playing career and started out on the coaching trail with both Keighley Cougars and then Leeds Rhinos.

Powell was a stand-off who also featured in the centres or at loose-forward and he achieved more than 30 caps for Great Britain and England between 1989 and 1996.

He appeared in the first Super League Grand Final at stand-off for Leeds, alongside scrum-half Ryan Sheridan who is one of his assistant coaches at The Halliwell Jones Stadium.

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Powell won a Challenge Cup Final medal with Leeds at the old Wembley in 1999, when again Sheridan was his half-back partner.

He was head coach of the Leeds side that lost to Bradford Bulls in the 2003 Challenge Cup Final.

Leeds decided to move Powell into the director of rugby role at Headingley and bring in Tony Smith for the 2004 season, a year in which Powell was assistant coach to Andy Kelly for the Ireland national team.

Powell made his own change of direction in 2005, becoming the attack coach and matchday manager for rugby union team Leeds Tykes before returning to the 13-a-side game as Featherstone Rovers boss in 2008.

He led Rovers to three consecutive Championship League Leaders' Shields and Grand Finals between 2010 and 2012.

And it was from there that he moved to Castleford Tigers in 2013 where he stayed until the end of last season prior to signing for Warrington Wolves for the next three seasons as head coach.

He steered Cas to Challenge Cup Finals in 2014 and 2021, as well as the Super League Grand Final in 2017, but on each occasion his side finished as runners-up.

Cas were the stand-out team of 2017 under his guidance and won the League Leaders' Shield for the first time in their history.

These Prior to Wire pictures courtesy of SWpix.com and Warrington Guardian's archives look back over his career so far:

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