Editorial: Warriors pay price of poor management

For soccer coaches, words of support from a club boss are generally regarded as the kiss of death. Such, it seems, is also the case with the Warriors. Just days after receiving the backing of chief executive Mick Watson, coach Daniel Anderson has left the rugby league club. The Warriors said he had resigned; many will conclude that, if so, he merely jumped before he was pushed. Whatever the case, two things are clear: it was time for Anderson to go; and the reasons for his departure were not all of his own making.

Anderson has paid the price for a season that started with predictions of outstanding success but to date has realised just three wins. The Warriors, after three consecutive top-eight finishes under his tutelage, including a Grand Final appearance in 2002, languish second from bottom of the National Rugby League. The team has performed listlessly, lacking motivation and direction in equal measure.

Some of the reasons for this can be attributed to Anderson. Players acquired from Australia during the off-season have failed to perform to expectation. This has placed more emphasis on the club's young players. As good as some may prove to be, they are not yet ready to cope consistently with the tough grind of the Australian competition. And once losses begin to accumulate, morale sags and a winning culture evaporates.

However, the season might not have been a total write-off had the club's leading forward, Ali Lauitiiti, been handled more astutely. His departure, in lamentable circumstances, seems to have been largely out of Anderson's hands. Every attempt should have been made to retain a player of Lauitiiti's talent, whatever the shortcomings in his attitude, but the coach was in no position to orchestrate this. He was in Australia overseeing the preparation of the New Zealand test side. Instead, it was the chief executive who delivered an ultimatum that backfired. Even worse than the wielding of the axe, however, was the aftermath of the execution.

It must be virtually unprecedented in professional sport for a club to use its leading players to denigrate a departing colleague. The risk in terms of team morale is obvious. Yet this is exactly what the Warriors did, releasing statements scornful of Lauitiiti in the names of captain Monty Betham and playmaker Stacey Jones.

The second rower never deserved this; within the Warriors' "family" he had been well regarded for his personal qualities as well as his playing skills. The players' statements tore asunder the Warriors' carefully cultivated image, and poisoned morale. Other players had every reason to question the club's man-management - and to wonder about their own position in an organisation that could act so contemptuously. That one act also made a mockery of the belief of the Warriors' owner, Cullen Sports, that it possessed the expertise to revitalise Pacific rugby.

The Lauitiiti episode deprived Anderson of any hope that he would be able to galvanise the squad sufficiently to gain respectable performances. On the field, the players looked sullen and almost uninterested. Off the field, the coach vented his frustration by openly criticising them. That merely exacerbated the problem. For his part, Mick Watson began to resort to management gobbledegook. The club's top players became "marquee athletes". All that did was distance him from the players, who probably struggled to understand what he was on about.

Given the deplorable circumstances, it was right for Anderson to leave. There was no prospect of him being an effective coach at the Warriors. Unfortunately, he has also jeopardised relations with some of his test players. It remains to be seen whether Tony Kemp, the new coach and Anderson's former assistant, has been fatally tarred by the past few months. Or whether a new face may be all that is needed to engender a new spirit. Either way, a coach should be able to stand or fall on his own mistakes, not those of others.



Warriors draw and results - 2004 NRL

Other NRL fixtures and points table