Words: Steve Deane
Editor: Winston Aldworth
Design: Paul Slater

IN THE BEGINNING there was hope. And money. With Dominion Breweries all-in on the Warriors’ 1995 extravagant entrance into the Australia Rugby League - to the point where they produced a beer can to match the club’s playing kit (or was it the other way around?) - there was money, all right. Money for a squad that included top dollar English superstars Denis Betts and Andy Platt. So much money Platt’s dogs also came along for the ride, the $12,000 relocation fee for the pooches providing no less value than the whopping salary paid for an ageing, broken front rower who would spend more time at the dog park than on the pitch.

As well as beer, there was top-shelf talent, with Panthers halfback Greg ‘Brandy’ Alexander adding another huge name to a squad well sprinkled with star dust. Complementing the impressive roster was a hefty slush fund for marketing, which would be needed to convert mainstream Kiwi sports fans into disciples of a sport still openly derided as ‘state-house rugby’ in many quarters.

Now, 28 years on, there is still money, with insulation magnate Mark Robinson’s Autex Industries the club’s sole owner - having dispatched nuisance value former acquisition partner the Carlaw Heritage Trust (Auckland Rugby League) in late 2019.

There’s so much money, apparently, the club could afford to pay another highly questionable front row recruit, Matt Lodge, a reported $700,000 not to take the field over the next two seasons.

So, yes, there is money. But is there still hope? Hope for a Warriors NRL club that has sucked up an ocean of goodwill as it has spiralled down the gurgler under the current ownership and management?

Or, with performances hovering between unwatchable and unforgiveable – and a first ever wooden spoon a realistic possibility - is all hope lost? Have the pandemic-ravaged Warriors finally gone the full humpty dumpty? Are they broken, beyond repair?

“This club ain’t broken,” says a defiant chief executive Cameron George. “It is powerful. It is committed to getting it right.”

That will take some doing.

Incredibly bad on the field, the Warriors have somehow been worse off it.

Having been lobbed the ultimate hospital pass by a pandemic that forced it to pack up from Penrose and relocate to seemingly everywhere from Redcliffe to Bonneydoon for a scarcely believable 1038 days, the club’s sacrifices to enable the NRL to maintain its structural (and contractual) integrity have been numerous and ongoing.

Summoning the spirit of Winston Churchill might be over-egging it, but there are certainly plenty of folks in NRL land who are fairly darn indebted to the efforts of a very few.

They might be losers, but these Warriors are heroes.

If nothing else – and given the state of play on the field there really isn’t anything else – these Warriors should engender sympathy, empathy and love.

And yet here we are: rock bottom. With a fan base that is, save the most indestructible of the diehards, disenchanted, demoralised or downright disgusted.

How has it come to this? Warriors fans are not exactly unfamiliar with failure. Their 27 seasons have produced just eight finals campaigns, and just two losing grand final appearances. No one seriously expected a club that has now played 57 consecutive away games to contend.

Yes, there have been some historically bad performances on the field, however the most costly dropped balls have come from those who lace up loafers rather than footy boots.

The club’s penchant for making bad situations exponentially worse through the ill-chosen words is in equal parts alarming, annoying and dispiriting.

Straight talkers who don't tolerate fools or failure is the rep George and Robinson appear to be attempting to cultivate.

Well, talk is cheap. Or expensive if what you are saying is alienating your fan base.

How many club members who have forked out for season tickets year after year in the hope that next year will be the year would have been impressed to hear George’s assertion that Robinson “doesn’t have to answer to anyone” for the decisions he makes?

How many salt-of-the-earth leaguies would have nodded in admiration as Robinson described his dispute with Lodge as ongoing fallout from two ‘alpha males’ arguing in bar? And then be thrilled to learn that Alpha 1 had paid off Alpha 2 to the tune of roughly 13 times New Zealand’s median wage, partly with next year’s salary cap money?

Throw in the sacking of a club icon Stephen Kearney as coach while locked down with the team in Australia in 2020, the revelations that his replacement, Nathan Brown, was not prepared to relocate to New Zealand, and the 180 degree turn on star playmaker Shaun Johnson and the last three years haven’t exactly been a masterclass in fan engagement.

“Have we got it right for the last few years,” asks George as we work through the list of PR debacles? “No, we haven’t got it 100 per cent right. But I’ll tell you what, we’ve got 80-70-90 per cent of it right. And we’re just trying to tweak the bits to get the last bits right and off we go.”

George’s optimism and passion are infectious. He truly believes the club is on the right path. And he is not, it transpires, incapable of self-reflection.

“There are so many things I could have got better. But when has anybody ever got it bloody 100 per cent right?”

One clear regret is the way Johnson’s departure was handled after the 2018 season.

“We are not going to compromise our culture on and off the field with people who do not wish to represent our club, members and fans in the way we expect,” George said when Johnson’s switch to the Sharks was confirmed.

Whatever your thoughts on Johnson – and they will likely be mixed - he is a club legend who came through the junior ranks and delivered as many magical moments as anyone who has ever donned one of the club’s innumerable jerseys.

Did he really need to be told not to let the door hit him on his arse on the way out?

“I think there are things that both parties said that with the benefit of hindsight you wish you didn’t.” says George. “I respect Shaun. He is a terrific person and it is great having him back around the club.

“Did we get that call right? I’m probably sitting here and saying ‘we probably didn’t’.

“I could have handled that whole thing better.”

Has he learned anything from his and Robinson’s regular afflictions of foot in mouth disease

“Don’t talk to the press,” he quips.

It’s said in jest. George knows the media is the conduit to a fanbase the club is desperate to reconnect with. He’s keen to clarify that the reference to Robinson “not having to answer to anybody” was in the context of not revealing the details of the payout to Lodge – and not intended to mean the owner wasn’t accountable to fans and sponsors.

While he deflects topics such as arguing alpha males and sacking a coach as he wasn’t the right personality fit in Robinson’s direction, George is passionate in defence of the only sole private owner of an NRL club.

“Mate we’ve got an owner who is the most invested, passionate, committed owner this club has ever had bar none,” says George. “And he’s doing everything he possibly can to make sure that the club long-term, internally and externally, is building and is going to be successful for the people in New Zealand and the fans worldwide. That’s his passion. That’s his commitment. He does it day-in and day-out. He is so caring, and considerate about every person in the whole club, as he is in his own businesses. I’ve seen it first-hand. And he wants it right.”

How then, does this caring, considerate duo get it so wrong, so consistently? Why do they insist on shooting from the lip only to hit themselves in the feet.

The answers, says one former club insider, is that the pair aren’t exactly prone to seeking wiser counsel. It’s very much the Cam and Robbo show.

“I don’t think anyone has any influence on them,” says the insider. “It’s the owner and CEO in their own echo chamber.”

Given the Warriors would get smashed by 50 points with God as their owner for their regular Anzac Day trip to the Storm, it is perhaps unfair to point to the decline in the club’s fortunes as coming in the very first week of Autex’s ownership. The record books do, however, show a 10-50 defeat at AAMI Park for a team that was processing news that Watson’s 19-year ownership era was over.

In fact, the club rebounded well enough in following weeks, winning nine of its remaining 16 matches to book a first NRL finals berth since 2011.

All seemed well enough. However an ineffectual performance from Johnson in a first week finals defeat by a Penrith team the Warriors had beaten comfortably two weeks earlier would have significant ramifications.

The club had prevaricated over extending their talisman’s contract all season. With Johnson unconvinced he had the faith of his coach and feeling increasingly frozen out, the sides parted company – leaving the Warriors high and dry without a marquee playmaker.

While George admits that he would not make the same decision again, he rejects the premise that Johnson’s departure precipitated a significant downturn in fortunes.

“That wasn’t the point that made the club go into a downward spiral,” he says. “I don’t use that as a marker in the sand.”

Maybe not, but 2019 will go down as a year to forget, with the promise of the previous season dissolving into a 9-1-13 record and a dispiriting 13th-placed finish.

The campaign was grim enough that Kearney – despite having signed a three-year contract extension – would enter 2020 on an uncomfortably short leash.

Discomfort, though, was about to become a global staple.

Whatever plans the Warriors had to turn the ship around in 2020 were about to be blown out of the water by the Covid-19 pandemic.

EAST AUCKLAND TRUCK salesman Gary Norton reaches for a beer and does some mental arithmetic. The West Australian has been a Warriors club member since the Perth-based Western Reds folded. “97, 98, something like that,” he says.

An expansion club that joined the ARL in the same 1995 intake as the Warriors, the Reds were a casualty of the Super League war, frozen out when the Super League and ARL reformation after the fractured 1997 season.

Since then Norton has been the staunchest of Warriors fans, never thinking twice about renewing his membership for the NRL club of his adoptive city.

It’s 90 minutes before the kick-off of Sunday’s homecoming match and Norton’s perched at a bar leaner in the Mad Butcher Lounge with three fellow diehards. They are not, it transpires, overly thrilled with the state of the club.

The biggest issue, says Norton, is that one man – sole owner Mark Robinson - wields too much power. He’d like to see a fan ownership model introduced.

“You want to own this rubbish?” quips Blair Ingles, a member of the club for the last seven years.

“What happened with [departed prop Matt] Lodge?” asks Tim Williams, a guest for the day who is pondering purchasing a membership for next season, but admits he is unlikely to follow through.

“The lack of transparency there leaves you a little cold. There’s no accountability at all.”

The group also has issues with a perceived lack of professionalism exhibited by the club’s management, Norton citing a recent interview by George confirming coach Nathan Brown’s departure.

“It was Browny this and Browny that. It should have been ‘coach Nathan Brown is leaving the club’. Where is your professionalism? It’s like [the management] are part of the team. It sets the tone.”

There are other gripes - “don’t get me started on recruitment” - but none of the group are about to walk away from what has been a largely unrequited love affair.

“We are shit, but…” says Ingles.

It’s a sentiment no doubt shared by a number of the 26,500 fans who have made the pilgrimage to Mt Smart to welcome home their side for a match between the 14th and 15th-placed clubs in the 16-team competition.

A stone’s throw from the Mad Butcher Lounge, NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo addresses a group of local reporters. Abdo is in town to show face at the homecoming match, and confirm that New Zealand will host next year’s NRL All Stars preseason jamboree.

As Abdo speaks, Sir Dave Dobbyn – who is headlining the pre-match entertainment - breaks into a moving rendition of Welcome Home.

It’s a poignant moment. If Abdo was ever going to drop a good news bomb, now is the time.

“This is a show of community,” he says of the capacity crowd that has been building steadily. “This is a show of the spirit of sport as opposed to being about winning and losing. That is always quite inspiring.”

Indeed. But for a club that has taken its share of beatings in the name of the spirit of sport, it would be nice to hear some details about the NRL’s plans to help it do even a little bit more winning.

The NRL has propped up the club commercially during the pandemic, insists Abdo, but he declines to put a figure on the amount the governing body has coughed up to keep the club afloat.

“That’s an internal number for us,” he says. “We’ve all contributed. It is a privately-owned club. The owners have invested, and of course we have invested.”

Of course.

Much like the chat with Abdo, the Warriors’ start to their first home match promises plenty but ultimately delivers little of substance.

After a rousing welcome onto the pristine playing surface, hooker Wayde Egan bursts through the Tigers’ line after just 23 seconds. Chanel Harris-Tevita – an emerging star who has chosen to walk away from the sport next season - looms up in support and is certain to go in under the posts for a fairytale try. But somehow the fullback loses his feet before he can take the pass, and the moment is lost.

A tackle later stalwart prop Jazz Tevaga loses the ball in a massive collision. One of just two players in the side to appear in the club’s previous home game 1038 days earlier, Tevaga is referred for a mandatory concussion check, his comeback match having lasted just 43 seconds.

Happily, Tevaga will pass his head injury assessment and return to the field. It takes 29 minutes featuring several miscues, but eventually the Warriors score their first Mt Smart try in almost three years.

Fittingly it is captain Tohu Harris who finally crashes over. He’s greeted immediately by Tevaga, who wraps his arms around Harris, screams in jubilation and fist pumps in the direction of the packed southern stand.

The Warriors are back, baby.

They will go on to defeat the Tigers 22-2 and shuffle up two places on the NRL ladder, but the reality is that the team on display was the bare remnants of a club dismantled by Covid-19. Prior to the pandemic the club fielded players across four competitions – the NRL, NRLW, NSW Cup and SG Ball – and had clear pathways for player development. Covid has whittled that back to a squad of just 30 NRL pros, and some juniors on training contracts.

Investment in player development has increased, says George at the start of homecoming week, however with the regular pathways disestablished the operation is disjointed and fragmented.

“We’ve got to come back here and we’ve got to rebirth our club,” says George.

“We’ve got to reset and go again.”

For the majority of the players, the homecoming began when they were formally welcomed back to Mt Smart Stadium with a moving pōwhiri before training on Tuesday.

For Tevaga it was a moving experience.

“It’s been a while, eh,” he says afterwards. “It’s been a minute.

“I don’t think any of the Aussie boys have experienced anything like that before so it was cool for them and for us to be welcomed home.

“It feels refreshing coming home. It’s just like you can take a breath. That’s the way it feels. I mean we’ve been through everything in the last three years. We’ve lost two coaches, we’ve lost players mid-season. We’ve been through everything. Now to finally come home is like a weight off our shoulders. It’s like, f***, finally.”

This isn’t the first rebirth. In 2000 the club came back from the brink of financial oblivion, while recovering from deeply unsuccessful coaching tenures is pretty much business as usual.

The six-year span from 2006 to 2011 when now premiership-winning Panthers coach Ivan Cleary was at the helm was the only time the Warriors could claim to have been consistently good. Not great, certainly. But four finals campaigns in six seasons and one grand final tilt is a good run for any club not called Melbourne Storm.

Prior to the Cleary era the club made just three finals appearances in 11 seasons – all under Daniel Anderson. It boasts an overall winning percentage of just 43 per cent.

Post Cleary things have been grim – with just one finals appearance (Kearney 2018) in 11 seasons under no fewer than eight coaches.

Drill down into the Autex era and it is even more dire, with the club compiling a 38-1-59 record under Kearney and Brown since April 2018.

But, of course, there is a ready-made and reasonable excuse for the lack of winning: Covid.

George has little time for those from previous regimes who might snipe from the sidelines.

“There are so many people who want to provide advice as they have been here before,” he says.

“What I do know is that the club hasn’t won a premiership before. So, anyone before me, if they want to have a crack or anything like that, have a look at the history of the place.

“All I have tried to do over the last three or four years is continue the club on the right pathway to give our fans the best success we possibly can. There’s a thing that jumped in our road called Covid. It might have stopped us – but it ain’t gonna kill us.

“Our dream was just to get home and reconnect our staff and our players right throughout our system.”

At this point of our chat – 40 minutes of having some open wounds probed - George becomes animated.

“Will I get it right every time going forward? I will say no. But I am going to have a f***ing go.

“I lay awake at night wanting to get it right. I love it. I love it. You wouldn’t believe how much I love it. Would I change anything? I just want to get home. I just want to get home. We have 15 (NZ-based) staff who haven’t met 80 per cent of our players. I just want to get home, get all of that reconnected, take a deep breath and f***ing go after it.

“We have a good footy team this year. We have got a really f***ing good footy team next year. And the year after and the year after. We have got a bunch of young kids coming through we are all going to be proud of.

“All that has just been slowed up.

“We have an owner who is just so passionate about bringing success here. He will get there. He will get there. I can’t wait to be a part of it.”