Warrington Wolves’ new signing believes the team will compete for league championships under Sam Burgess.
Warrington Wolves enjoyed a rollercoaster season in 2023, but it ended in disappointment. As a result, the club’s executives have flipped the script and hired Sam Burgess as head coach, a man who new signing Lachlan Fitzgibbon is particularly thrilled to work with.
Fitzgibbon signed with Warrington back in July, and much has changed at the Halliwell Jones Stadium since then, the most notable being the departure of head coach Daryl Powell in favor of rookie Sam Burgess.
Fitzgibbon, 29, will come in England soon to join Burgess and company, bringing over 100 NRL games of experience and plenty of physicality to Warrington’s pack. He joins from the Newcastle Knights, who had a remarkable run of form to make the playoffs in 2023, but he has loftier goals for his stay in England.
Speaking to the Newcastle Herald, he explained: “They’re a big, strong club and have been thereabouts the last couple of years, they just haven’t managed to get the job done.
“They’ve got a strong squad and I thought with the addition of myself and a couple of other players they’ve signed, they’re going to be in contention over the next few years to win some league titles and hopefully some Challenge Cups.
“They were confident of that and they felt like I could be a good fit for being involved. To hopefully be a part of that would be pretty cool and something special.”
Warrington of course are yet to lift a Super League title and scuppered what looked like being a brilliant chance this past season given the way the club started. The Cheshire club won their opening eight games before tailing well away and going on a losing streak of nine, an incredible feat to manage both streaks in the same season.
As such the club took action to remove Daryl Powell, the man who had recruited Fitzgibbon, and they’ve backed first time head coach Sam Burgess as the man for the job, someone who the second-rower is ‘super keen to link up with’.
“I’m super keen to link up with him. I had the pleasure of playing against him a few times, and he was such a great leader and player, so I’m sure that will reflect in his coaching,” Fitzgibbon told the Herald.
“He’s a proud Englishman, so going over there and being successful will be huge for him, I imagine.”
Fitzgibbon will join a potentially devastating group that includes Paul Vaughan, Sam Kasiano, and Matty Nicholson, among others, but he’s revealed what drew him to Super League in the first place.
“The Super League was always on my radar,” he says.
“I’d always wanted to try my hand overseas, to compete in a different league, and the Super League is a really strong competition right now.”
“Rugby league operates in small windows and time frames, and I just felt like this year was probably the right time to go.”
“I had a good opportunity and a good deal to spend three years over there, and you just never know – off the back of my year this year, and we had a decent year, the Knights, you just never know if I’d stayed another year, would this opportunity have been available for the following year?”
“So I thought the window was right and the opportunity was there.”
Fitzgibbon will travel to England in the coming weeks to meet with his new club and head coach, Burgess, who has only been in England for a fortnight as the team prepares for the forthcoming season.
