The Warriors have signed four more players for the 2001 Australian National Rugby League season.
Named yesterday were hard-hitting forward Mark Tokey, second-rower Wairangi Koopu, Australian utility back David Myles amd standoff Cliff Beverley.
Warriors manager Daniel Anderson said: "Adding these players to the eight named last week means we now have
the nucleus of a good team and are in a much stronger position than we were seven days ago.
"The players understand that we're making fair offers and accept the principle of performance-based contracts."
Anderson said the Warriors were now talking to Logan Swann, Ali Lauiti'iti, Robert Mears, Scott Pethybridge, Jason Death, Odell Manuel, Ivan Cleary and Joe Vagana.
Meanwhile, five hardship cases have been identified among Warriors players during negotiations with the new management, players' representative Tony Butterfield said in Sydney yesterday.
A 10-day period for contract negotiations - agreed to by the NRL, the NRL Players' Association, player managers, new Warriors owners Cullen Investments and the New Zealand Rugby League - ends today.
When the agreement was announced early last week, the parties said they would give special consideration to hardship cases.
Butterfield said the aim was to lessen the financial impact on players who were not wanted by the renamed New Zealand Warriors, but who had contracts with the one-time Auckland Warriors.
He said forwards Matt Spence and Scott Coxon, winger Lee Oudenryn and a couple of others fell into that category.
"We've made our intentions known," he said of what relief the players should get. "We've left it to [NRL chief executive] David Moffett to broker those deals.
"The players won't receive 100 per cent of what they are owed, but at least some minor assistance that would lessen financial disaster for some of them ought to be forthcoming."
- NZPA
