This year's Warriors team is in danger of plumbing new depths. Photo / Getty
This year's Warriors team is in danger of plumbing new depths. Photo / Getty
OPINION:
For a rugby league club that has experienced some appalling years, you have to wonder whether 2022 will be the Warriors' worst yet – and if they will climb out of the massive hole they've dug for themselves.
Years ago, I wrote a column on the Warriors outlining thecircumstances which marked 2014 as the lowest of many low points this embattled club has faced. But wait - there's a new contender. Open the door and let in 2022, when the Warriors' almost complete lack of credibility – on the field and off – could snatch the title from 2014.
You may remember 2014. It was when the Warriors were losing on the field and off, with then co-owners Eric Watson and Sir Owen Glenn publicly at each other's throats over shareholding.
After a woeful showing against the Sharks, the club fired Matt Elliott – hailed as a marquee coach when he clearly wasn't – and then tried to tell us all he'd resigned; a strange tactic when the players were talking publicly about the coach being sacked. It was difficult to believe anything said by anyone connected with the club (a completely different mob from today's owner and management).
Back in 2012, Watson and Glenn had held a ludicrous press conference, saying their goal was to make the Warriors the most successful club in the NRL and the most successful franchise in Australasia (cue canned laughter). Two years later, Glenn said he wanted out of the shareholding arrangement - but Watson apparently offered him only $1 million for a 50 per cent holding that he paid over $6m for. When Glenn offered to buy Watson's shares, he said he was told the price was $15m. Watson denied all that.
The Warriors didn't make the playoffs and, in 2022, the situation looks just as dire. There's been another debacle against the Sharks – this time defeating the Warriors with only 12 men. The owner, Mark Robinson, is in the wars after stating that bad boy prop Matt Lodge left the club after an argument in a pub – carrying a $700,000 golden handshake. Lodge said there hadn't been an argument.
So why has the club given a player 700 big ones when Lodge was the one breaking his contract? Just like the Elliott affair, the club have chosen to use words that do not reveal the total situation.
Right now, the club just looks stupid and more than a little Mickey Mouse. It has a coach who can't seem to breed the losing DNA out of the team. It has a poor roster and, even when marquee players join the Warriors (with some exceptions), they seem to undergo some kind of mysterious talent extraction; the Bermuda Triangle of the NRL, where good players go missing. They have a CEO experienced at making out everything is all right when the opposite appears to apply. They have an owner who seems motivated by genuine desire for the club to do well – but who is maybe too involved with the day-to-day.
The Warrior of 2014 also suffered some low moments. Photo / Getty
It doesn't matter if Robinson has riches aplenty; Lodge's $700,000 (a figure not yet disputed by Robinson or anyone else) will come off next year's salary cap, restricting the Warriors' ability to attract new troops. So the Warriors and their fans can't even chant the "there's always next year" mantra as there's a $700,000 crater in the kitty. That's the kind of money you'd need for, say, James Fisher-Harris.
It means Chanel Harris-Tavita made a good decision, didn't he? The gutsy young player is taking a year off from the NRL and the Warriors. If I was playing for them, I'd want out too. Former coach Todd Payten was also proved right in turning down the chance to coach them; he's now leading the Cowboys, third on the ladder.
The shame of it is that we are about a month away from the club finally returning for home games. It should be a celebration but not only is winning looking increasingly difficult, it is coming at a time when the club is not being fully transparent with the fans.
Talking of winning (or at least contending, something that hasn't happened for an age), it seems to be the Warriors' sole and rather naive objective. And please don't talk about the pandemic excuse or the enforced stay in Australia; the Ukraine football team is one step away from qualifying for the World Cup and they have been based in Slovenia while Russia bombs the bejesus out of their homeland and families.
The Warriors' real target should be growing and nurturing rugby league in New Zealand; winning on the field is just part of that. Right now, they don't appear to be advancing the cause of rugby league in this country at all.
When Robinson took over the club, he too made a grand statement: "We could make it the best footy club in the NRL, and turn it into a juggernaut."
A juggernaut is a huge, powerful, overwhelming force or a big truck, like one of those road trains in the US. The Warriors are more like a Suzuki Swift with two wheels missing and two flat tyres – and they won't tell us what happened.
