{"id":300348,"date":"2025-12-05T11:31:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T11:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/300348\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T11:31:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T11:31:11","slug":"paul-wellens-speaks-for-first-time-after-st-helens-exit-as-nrl-switch-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/300348\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Wellens speaks for first time after St Helens exit as NRL switch explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"St\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Paul Wellens is a couple of weeks into his NRL coaching career, a role in which he\u2019s now spoken for the first time since his St Helens\u2019 departure.<\/p>\n

The St Helens legend saw his time as head coach of the club end at the conclusion of the 2025 Super League season with Saints deciding not to offer Wellens a new contract<\/a>, bringing an end to his three years in charge of the club.<\/p>\n

He won the World Club Challenge in his first competitive game but silverware eluded the Red Vee after that and much of the 2025 campaign was spent working out the team\u2019s best spine with the club\u2019s attack regularly criticised<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After leaving Saints, Wellens has taken up a role coaching with NRL side North Queensland Cowboys with the 45-year-old confirmed as an assistant coach in early November<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With the NRL pre-season now underway, Wellens has spoken to the Cowboys media<\/a> team about his new role and how he\u2019s found life since leaving St Helens.<\/p>\n

Ex-St Helens boss Paul Wellens picks out early highlights of NRL coaching<\/p>\n

The former full-back admitted: \u201cIt\u2019s a bit of an adjustment in terms of the climate, which has hit me pretty hard in the last week or so but I\u2019m loving life over here. It\u2019s been a big change for me but one that I\u2019m really excited about.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been at the one club for all my life so when the opportunity came to do something different, that really excited me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always kept a close eye on the NRL as a competition and have really enjoyed watching that style of rugby so it\u2019s great to be a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking on how training has gone so far, Wellens spoke about both the squad and the coaches as he detailed what had impressed him.<\/p>\n

He explained: \u201cI\u2019ve been really impressed with the work ethic and the way the team is going after each training session, it\u2019s been very impressive.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve really enjoyed working with the staff around how detailed they are with the planning to make sure that we cater the sessions in the right way and get the quality out of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for which players have impressed, he named a new signing and two seasoned veterans, admitting:\u00a0\u201cThere\u2019s been a number of really impressive individuals out there. A lot of the young players have been very impressive and a player like Reed (Mahoney) who is new to the team has really set an example in terms of how he goes about his training.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlayers like Coen Hess who have been here a long long time continue to set a really high standard. Jason Taumalolo has only started back training recently but you can clearly see the impact and influence he has on the team also.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wellens\u2019 Cowboys will be in Las Vegas in 2026 to help kick off the NRL season as they face St George Illawarra Dragons.<\/p>\n

Check out the latest episode of The Serious About Rugby League Show on our YouTube channel here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Wellens is a couple of weeks into his NRL coaching career, a role in which he\u2019s now…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-300348","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","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}