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Paul Vaughan arrived in England two years ago as damaged goods, an NRL cartoon baddie after he had been sacked by the Dragons for breaking Covid rules and fallen out with Canterbury. If he wins the Challenge Cup at Wembley on Saturday, he will be a Warrington superhero.
The sight of the giant prop – who looks as if he squeezes into a jersey two sizes too small and shorts borrowed from Kylie Minogue – running in from the back fence to get Warrington out of trouble, or smashing his way through a defensive line before delicately offloading with delightful subtlety, is hard to forget.
Vaughan shares these talismanic traits with a prime Sam Burgess, which is no coincidence. For seven years, Vaughan and Burgess tried to smash each other into Bondi Bay, rivals among the NRL’s big boppers. Now their relationship has a totally different dynamic.
“It’s funny,” says Vaughan of the Warrington coach. “He’s pretty fresh out of the game – he’s only a couple of years older than me and we’ve played a bit of footy against each other. As a bloke playing in the position he used to play, everything he says correlates with my game and how I want to play. So I listen very closely to what Sam says and if I can implement a couple of things from his game into mine that will be great. What he says holds a lot of weight. He’s a great coach and a great leader of men.”
It would be an exaggeration to say Vaughan alone took Warrington to Wembley, but he has been exceptional. He was magnificent for the injury-hit Wire in their semi-final win against Leigh, as were James Harrison, Matt Dufty and several others. Time and again in recent weeks, Vaughan has stepped up when his team needed him, injecting energy and passion with an explosive carry or ferocious tackle.
“The special thing about our group is there’s players like that all over the pitch,” he says. “We sometimes rely too much on Matt Dufty at full-back to get us out of trouble because he’s such a flashy player with great skill, and we maybe lean on George [Williams] a little bit too, but I think we all rely on each other. I try to lead the team but there’s boys across the pitch who do that week in week out. If I need to take a tough carry I’ll always put my hand up. I’ve always been very hard on myself: I want to be consistent. You don’t want a massive gap between your best game and worst game. I’ve played 14 years and those extremes don’t really happen that regularly for me. I think I’ve done a pretty good job.”
Warrington go into the final as considerable underdogs. At the halfway point of the Super League season, Hull KR are top of the table with twice as many wins as midtable Warrington. Willie Peters’ side are in terrific form, flattening all comers, including St Helens in a resounding 34-4 win last weekend. They will be supported by twice as many fans at Wembley as they try to lift their first major trophy in 40 years.
So how is Burgess preparing his team to tear up the form book? “He’s kept the week as normal as possible,” says Vaughan. “You look at the opposition but it comes down to what we do as a team, what we go after, what we value and what we can celebrate. It’s a game of footy: plenty of times the understrength team comes out on top.”
It is hard to spot any weaknesses in the Robins side, but a pack stripped of the injured Jared Waerea-Hargreaves may be one area where injury-hit Warrington have an advantage. “We have great belief,” says Vaughan. “We know what we’re capable of. We’ve got to be proud of putting ourselves in this position two years in a row. Yes, we’re midtable and that’s not flattering, but we’ve had a lot of injuries and are in a patch now where we’re confident – we just need to get a roll on.”
Vaughan is used to such occasions. Not only did he play in Warrington’s defeat to Wigan in last year’s final, but his career is littered with major matches: from the 2013 World Cup opener at the Millennium Stadium, to State of Origin series deciders with New South Wales, and representing Australia in Auckland.
“I’ve been lucky to play in pretty big games so you can fall back on the experience you’ve had, whether good or bad,” he says. “It’s good to have had the experience of last year. Everything will be more familiar now, which will make the week easier. I’d not played at Wembley and the buildup was really something special. It was a strange game. We’d been red-hot all the way to the final and then we put together one of our worst games, which was disappointing and frustrating. We didn’t deliver. A few of the boys hadn’t played on a big stage before so they will be better for that. You don’t know when you’ll have this opportunity again so you’ve got to take it with both hands.”
Vaughan is in the form of his life just as he’s starting to wonder when his body will fail him. Is this his last dance? “It might be getting to that point. I’m 34 this year and you can’t play for ever. But I feel great at the moment. I feel in really good shape and I’m contributing to the team really well, which is a bit strange as I’m getting old, but physically I feel on top of my game.”
He is performing as well as anyone in Super League, so Warrington will not be the only club making him offers for next season. Whoever he signs for, Vaughan knows his next destination once this season ends: taking the family back to Italy to visit the village near Naples where his grandma grew up. She will turn 102 later this month. Given those genes, it’s little surprise Vaughan is playing like someone a decade younger.
If Vaughan is looking for inspiration before the cup final on Saturday, he could look back to his debut for Italy against England before the 2013 World Cup. “That was crazy,” he says. “I was a young kid in my first year of first grade. We came up against James Graham, the Burgess brothers, Sam Tomkins, and we beat them 15-14. It was mad. And then we beat Wales at the opening ceremony in Cardiff. We had a great team: we were stacked. That was one of the highlights of my career. We celebrated pretty well that night.”
As sporting shocks go, Warrington beating Hull KR at Wembley would have nothing on that.
One more thing
Wigan Warriors are hoping to have won a Challenge Cup before Warrington and Hull even kick off at Wembley. Wigan will be trying to stop St Helens winning their fifth successive Women’s Challenge Cup on Saturday lunchtime. Denis Betts’ side are the bolters of 2025, the club’s investment paying off as they have followed up their handsome semi-final win over Leeds by thrashing champions York in the Super League opener, putting a ton on Barrow and winning comfortably at Leeds last weekend. Saturday’s derby should be a cracker.
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