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On his entertaining Monday Night Football show, Matthew Johns called out the New Zealand Warriors players for their apparent lack of ‘care factor’ following their record 62-6 loss to the Penrith Panthers on the weekend.
Johns has never spoken a truer word when he said that fans should never have to see their players laughing and joking around with opponents moments, no, mere seconds, after the final whistle had blown.
What was there to laugh about?
Didn’t we just witness a new club low?
One really has to wonder: what on earth is going on at New Zealand’s only NRL club these days?
What has become of the once brave hearted?
New Zealand Warriors fans have to be some of the most long suffering and masochistic fans in the NRL. It is a basic requirement of being a supporter. It should be written into the club’s charter.
Mt Smart crowds consistently put up with bleak weather, bizarre coaching appointments (think John Monie, think Tony Kemp, think Matt Elliot), Lion Red being the only beer available, grand final hidings and a long procession of local-born mercurial players with obvious flair and abundant raw talent but little ‘stickability’ when the going gets truly tough (usually midseason).
You can add to these wounds the seldom talked about fact that Australia’s best and most talented play-makers have zero interest in crossing the ditch to bolster the Warriors playmaking positions.
Despite being consistently well under the salary cap, club management hasn’t been able to ‘poach’ one of the NRL’s outstanding stand-offs, halfbacks, hookers or fullbacks since the days of Mathew Ridge (and he probably did so largely out of patriotism).
These are key ‘game changer’ positions in a rugby league 13. The failure to secure more than one genuine marquee player should be considered another club failing.
And now the fans have to stomach the sight of their players laughing and back slapping after copping their second worst loss in history.
It is hard not to feel that his current playing group has become a bad a joke, and yet they seemed to think the joke was on everyone else.
Which begs the question: are the Warriors still playing for their coach? It doesn’t appear so.
If not, then why? Is it because the core playing group never wanted him in the first place?
Is it because the majority of them were rooting for highly successful juniors coach John Ackland – a man widely acknowledged to have done all the hard yards you could ask for with the Juniors, even winning the Toyota Cup twice in consecutive years – before he was mystifyingly overlooked for journeyman Aussie coach Elliot.
The painfully close losses (some might say ‘chokes’) to the Roosters, Rabbitohs, Raiders and Storm would undoubtedly have been demoralising. But those are all high quality sides this season and with a sliver more composure, those results could have been reversed.
There is no need for panic at this stage, but there is definitely some kind of ‘psychological hoodoo’ hanging over this Warriors squad and that has to be somehow addressed.
It’s awfully early in a season for such a talented playing group to be giving up on the cause, and their coach.
And surely there’s never an excusable point in the season to be disrespecting your fan-base: especially one that always turns up on grey Auckland Sunday afternoons to have some fun, and pay your wages.
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