{"id":485769,"date":"2025-10-09T13:43:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T13:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/485769\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T13:43:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T13:43:10","slug":"paul-wellens-st-helens-head-coach-departs-after-two-years-in-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/485769\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Wellens: St Helens head coach departs after two years in role"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wellens served as assistant coach to Holbrook and Woolf during a period of unprecedented success for the club as they won four successive Super League Grand Finals between 2019 and 2022, as well as the Challenge Cup in 2021.<\/p>\n

He took over from Woolf following the 2022 season and went on to sign a contract extension<\/a> with the club in 2024 to remain for the 2025 campaign.<\/p>\n

During his time as head coach, however, Saints were dethroned by rivals Wigan Warriors, who began a period of dominance of their own during his tenure.<\/p>\n

In 2023, Saints fell short of retaining their Super League title for a fifth successive season, eventually finishing third and missing out on the League Leaders’ Shield on points difference following a remarkable regular season campaign.<\/p>\n

Their post-season hopes were ended by a 12-6 defeat at Catalans Dragons in the semi-final.<\/p>\n

By comparison, 2024 was a difficult season for the club as Saints struggled with a large number of injuries and rarely looked in contention to win silverware.<\/p>\n

They claimed the final play-off berth with a sixth-placed finish and pushed Sam Burgess’ Warrington all the way in their eliminator game before succumbing to a dramatic 23-22 reverse.<\/p>\n

Despite an impressive start to this season, during which they scored a cumulative 166 points in their opening three games and conceded just six, their form tailed off around the midway point of the season and they eventually finished fifth.<\/p>\n

They showed grit to come back and stun Leeds at Headingley in their first play-off game but could not pull off a surprise win at Hull KR in the semi-final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wellens served as assistant coach to Holbrook and Woolf during a period of unprecedented success for the club…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-485769","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115344507144854665","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}