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Look, it’s hard to suggest a signing for the Warriors that wouldn’t improve them. They were really bad last year, and the year before, and every year before that going back to 2018, when they made the finals for the only time in the last decade.
That’s not all their fault, of course, given that they played away from home for an entire year, but it’s also quite telling given the potential that the club has. It’s cliché to suggest that the Warriors underachieve their potential but that’s because it’s true.
2023 promises to be something of a reboot. They’ve hired Andrew Webster, the former Panthers assistant, to coach the team. They’ve had a squad overhaul, with plenty of key position players leaving and a grand total of ten first graders out, ten in.
For those of us looking to recommend signings to them, the issues are manifold. For one, we can’t really guess how they are going to play, because Andrew Webster has never coached a game of first grade.
For two, we don’t know who is going to play where, because their ins and outs have clustered around a few positions and left huge gaps in others.
And for three, it might well be that one season of chaos is enough and just trying to work with what they have might be the best option. Adding more ins and outs at this stage probably doesn’t help much.
Let’s approach the three angles analytically. Webster, in my fairly limited dealings with him at both the Panthers and with Samoa, has always struck me as a stand-up guy who will improve the Warriors’ culture no end, while having the tactical nous to get the most from the playing group too.
Shaun Johnson. (Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images)
Given that their big issue in 2022 was defence, the culture stuff matters. While I’m not 100% on board with the “defence is all attitude” reductivism mentality (as if having a plan didn’t matter at all), there is a lot to be said for effort, and effort comes from wanting to play for the group around you.
Webster will improve that side of things, because he comes from the system with the best track record for culture, the best practice for managing Pacific athletes and the most integrated pathway system. As long-term solutions go, he is a good choice.
In the short term, there’s an obvious area to fix. The Warriors conceded nearly 30 points per game last year, the worst record in the comp, despite being nowhere near the worst for the usual indicators of crap defence, like run metres conceded and line breaks conceded.
Interestingly, they were roughly the same in those metrics as the Dragons but ended up a try per game worse off. That speaks, to me, to differing levels of commitment.
Webster can fix that without signing a soul, though Marata Niukore and Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad, both defence-first players, will also help. CNK was low-key the best defensive fullback in the comp in 2021, with almost no errors, and they’ll hope to get him back to that level.
On the recruitment front, he deals with the on-going structural issues that the Warriors have in being based (or not based, as it has been) in New Zealand. Huge turnover was required and, truth be told, a change might be as good as a rest for plenty of the players.
Andrew Webster. (Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)
Reece Walsh and Chanel Harris-Tavita are huge losses in their spine and have been replaced by clear downgrades in Nicoll-Klokstad and Te Maire Martin, who will likely fit it at five eighth. Along with a past-his-best Shaun Johnson and the distinctly average Wayde Egan, this is probably the worst spine in the NRL.
One looks at the Kiwi national team halves at other clubs and weeps for New Zealand’s talent retention. Short of putting a blank cheque in front of Joey Manu for 2025 and curling up in a ball until the saviour arrives, I’m not sure where they can go.
Luke Metcalf and Ronald Volkman are back-up options but the latter is young and Metcalf has seven NRL games in two years. They might come good over time but…yeah. I’d be surprised if either make it in 2023.
The metres are also going to be a huge problem. Addin Fonua-Blake was their only player to make the top 40 for metres among NRL forwards and their backline was even worse, with Marcelo Montoya their best back, but still outside of the top 60 in that category.
The Warriors lost their second big man, Matt Lodge, midway through last season and haven’t replaced him. They also lost their second best interchange middle, Eliesa Katoa, plus arguably their third best, Ben Murdoch-Masila, and have brought in … nobody.
When I write these pieces, I sketch out a best 13 and bench: with the Warriors, I ended up with Jazz Tevaga in the front row, Bunty Afoa as one interchange middle, Dylan Walker as an impact 14, Freddy Lussick as a 9 rotation and nobody else. The options are thin on the ground.
Tom Ale is still there and might get more footy, Bayley Sironen will fit into that back row rotation somewhere along with Mitch Barnett and Jackson Ford, who has 2022 wrecked by injury at the Dragons.
Beyond that, there’s the Kepu twins, Otukinekina and Valingi, who were upgraded to top 30 contracts. They’re both huge bodies and will almost certainly get a run, but both are yet to make NRL debuts and weren’t standout in Q Cup.
We have to assume that Webster is going to play an agile pack with ball-playing forwards, because I really don’t see how it can go any other way.
Webster might have wanted to do that anyway given Tohu Harris is a decent option at lock and Addin Fonua-Blake will do that from prop, but he lacks cattle to do anything else. This won’t be the classic Warriors brand of footy.
If we’re looking at what they can actually do to change these things, the options are startlingly limited. They might get a run out of Martin Taupau – who I feel makes every second Smart Signings, such is the dearth of available big men – but he seems to have his heart set on staying in Sydney.
In truth, their best plan might be to throw the kitchen sink at Nelson Asofa-Solomona for 2024, offering a homecoming to the Kiwi international. Tof Sipley, another NZ-born star whom they previously let go, would also be a drastic improvement and is available for a chat.
For next year, avoiding the wooden spoon and working out where they want to be in the future is probably the only course to chat.
Webster, whenever I spoke to him about it, always impressed on me the idea that coaches should base their system on what they could do and not their ideology. It was pointless being philosophically rigid if you didn’t have the cattle to enact your ideas in the real world.
In many ways, he gets the perfect place to start. He’ll build culture from the ground up in an environment with, let’s face it, very little expectations. If he makes the Warriors fun again, re-roots them to their home and support base and gets a few results, especially in front of the Kiwi fans, this will probably be seen as a success.
The loss of pathways over Covid might prove the longer-term issue, but it might also prove to have kept a few years’ worth of talent at home that might otherwise have taken the well-trodden route to Australia.
Webster, having been at the club before, knows all about that side of things. From understudying at Penrith, he knows all about long-term planning. Now, he gets the chance to do it for real.