Former Kangaroo halfback Brett Kimmorley has accused the Warriors of not training hard enough, and doubts they have the commitment to turn the situation around.
Kimmorley, a 20-test veteran and ex-State of Origin regular for the Blues, rated the Auckland club among the four big disappointments of the season.
TheWarriors, under new coach Steve Kearney, have missed the top eight payoffs for a sixth consecutive season and Kimmorley identified a slack training attitude as the issue.
In an ESPN column on teams which "have really let their fans down", Fox Sports commentator Kimmorley said Kearney tried to bring in a Melbourne Storm style beyond his players' reach.
"The Warriors were terrible all year and are at least two years away from being competitive," said the retired Kimmorley, who played more than 300 NRL games with a number of clubs including the Storm.
"It seems that every player who goes there (Auckland) ends up being worse off. Everyone tries to match the Melbourne Storm, but what they have to understand is that the Storm are the hardest training team in the NRL.
"What generally happens when a club tries to match that workload is the players complain and go to the coach asking him to back off.
"I have a feeling that the Warriors don't work hard enough at training and it shows on the field. When the going gets tough they are just not competitive.
"It will take them at least 18 months of hard work to lift their game and I'm not convinced they are committed to doing that. Coach Stephen Kearney tried to put his foot down towards the back of the season, but it didn't work."
Kimmorley named the other dud clubs as.- Dragons: "looked so flat at the weekend, like they had been overcooked at training". Bulldogs: "(coach Des Hasler) has to take full responsibility for is the salary cap management and they have made a real mess of that." Canberra: "another team that should have done much better this season and really disappointed me were the Raiders. They really struggled to find consistency this year after promising so much in 2016".
