Chris Rattue: Fashionistas put the boot in

From the afraid, be very afraid department ...

For any weekend warhorses making a sporting comeback, be prepared for a surprise if it means buying a new pair of footy boots.

It's probably 10 years since I ventured into the football boot section of a sports store, and it proved to be a shock.

As in shocking pink, blue, red, green, yellow, white, a strange mustard colour, and a fluorescent grey that would make your hair turn grey, if it isn't already. And then there's all the weird shapes and graphics. They looked like things that would be designed by people who are into body piercing.

I thought the training would be the hard bit about a comeback. Instead, buying a pair of boots is the real hurdle.

Having been brought up in the dark boot ages, it's impossible to contemplate running around in gear like that, especially when you've got nobbly legs, nobbled skills and a top speed of very slow.

Even in my heyday, a coach once reckoned: "I've seen a pint of milk turn quicker than you." Ingredients like that don't go with flashing footwear.

It's been a long time since my last goal, a screaming, viciously dipping shot that left one of the finest goalkeepers ever to grace the over-30s section C division hopelessly outclassed. (That goal just gets better and better.)

Since then, there hasn't been football boot evolution. It's been revolution.

For any kids out there interested in football boot history, the last great leap forward was in the 1970s.

In that case, things didn't evolve, they revolved.

A New Zealand company came out with a boot that had sprigs mounted on a spinning disc. It can only be assumed the designer was a dodgy medical student who intended a glorious career in ankle, knee and hip replacement surgery.

But while that old boot may have helped Dame Margot Fonteyn pirouette around the stage, the modern gear actually looks like shoes a ballerina would be proud to wear.

If you haven't seen for yourself, imagine a cross between a fireworks display and a glass slipper, and you've got something approaching the modern football boot.

As for sprigs, what sprigs? There's stuff that looks like bubble wrap underneath, either that or blades you could slice bread with.

As for leather, forget it pal, although - remarkably - laces have survived.

To be fair, there were a couple of good old black boots skulking in the corner. Presumably, some crazies wear them so they stand out.

These looked like Mini Minors in a Lamborghini showroom, but never mind. We looked longingly at each other remembering days long gone, before fields were built on sand and people put coat hangers through their tongues.

Then I saw the disco boots again and, scared, I ran from the store.

If they've done that to the footy boots, God knows what lurks in the socks and shorts section. I was too afraid to ask.

Watson must stay focused

Yet another dawn.

League kicks off again on Sunday with the Warriors' opening clash at Ericsson Stadium against Manly - once the darlings here because of a Kiwi connection that was so strong they were tagged Maori-Warringah.

This seems like ages ago, as does much of the Warriors' own history. There have been so many Warriors coaches, players, administrators, owners; their fortunes have risen and fallen like the scariest ride in a fun park; and the crowds have both flocked to the ground or flown the coop before matches end.

When the original management revealed at one of their favoured grand functions they would be named the Warriors, I joked in print that hopefully they would not be worriers. Unfortunately, their opening decade is a lesson in wasted talent and mismanagement.

That a club which made the 2002 grand final and had built what seemed a solid base should finish second last in 2004 is sad for their fans, league, and a public hungry for more tasty ingredients on the sports menu.

Despite being the only team in town they have failed to develop an identifiable character, apart from the unwanted tag of enfant terribles.

The main thread is there has been no thread, save for Stacey Jones. And even his fortunes have careered around to the point he once opted out of the Kiwis.

The telling aspect of last year's debacle was that it came after the club management had pursued a rugby union project with the ferocity Ruben Wiki puts into his hits.

In the Warriors' defence here, I can assure readers that their claim of IRB interest in the so-named Pasifika test and Super 12 teams was no flight of fancy, and not just limited to the clandestine meeting in an Ericsson corporate box.

I have witnessed evidence of the true interest shown by the IRB big wigs including chief executive Mike Miller and commercial manager Hugh Morgan - who held further discussions with the Warriors - although it was never tested with the full IRB.

Miller even had lunch with Warriors owner Eric Watson in London, a meeting Miller privately described as "very positive".

These rugby leaders believed it could involve a partnership between the IRB, Warriors, Pacific Islands rugby and Sanzar.

The aim was to spread the rugby message and help Islands rugby, make money for the IRB, and use Pasifika as a guinea pig for other new-style IRB privatisation projects around the world.

So the Warriors weren't operating out of the loony bin, although their plans crashed when the New Zealand Rugby Union - who were disgruntled onlookers - invoked union's "family" ties as chief executive Chris Moller put it.

Moller was right. Rugby is a family in the true sense - a mix of comradeship, squabbles and intrigue. And like many families, rugby closed ranks at the sight of trouble.

But should the Warriors have been dancing with rugby union at all?

Eric Watson told chief executive Mick Watson he had taken his eye off the ball.

And almost as soon as Mick Watson put his considerable energy back in to the league club, results emerged - including the signing of Bulldogs stalwart Steve Price.

While discussing the Pasifika issue a year ago, Mick Watson made it clear to the Herald that he saw no problem with Warriors owners Cullen Sports running a union and league team, and players swapping between the two.

This is a matter for debate: I argued that this policy could only be to the detriment of a league club - in terms of losing key players and its identity - that has had far too many distractions in its short life in a rugby dominated land.

Mick Watson is a driven man - an enigmatic if somewhat unpredictable character with a restless edge - who led the club to its greatest times. But the same character which enables him to make key deals also leads him down side alleys. With Ivan Cleary and Kevin Campion alongside coach Tony Kemp, and Price and the equally hard-nosed Wiki in the squad, there is a core from which to let the talent flourish.

The question is, will Watson and Watson stay in the game - as in the rugby league game - or start turning their gaze elsewhere again. (Rugby, with its international profile, might remain an attraction.)

When Mick Watson was focused on the job, the Warriors were at their best. When he became distracted, so did they.

So far this year he has been a low-key figure. The signs are reasonably good.