By MURRAY DEAKER
Mark Graham has said on a number of occasions that he will resign from his coaching position at the Warriors if the team do not make the NRL playoffs this year.
It is a frank, honest assessment by a bloke who has been around rugby league all his life.
What Graham is simply saying is that given the resources the club has provided, if he can't produce the results within two seasons, he is the wrong person for the job.
Admirable as this blunt appraisal may be in normal circumstances with a normal team, it is not accurate when dealing with the Warriors.
This is not a normal team, nor could the circumstances surrounding the club be remotely described as normal. It isn't Graham who is to blame for the team's failure.
John Monie couldn't get any consistent results, and despite Frank Endacott's best efforts he could never get regular wins. It wasn't as though they were a couple of mugs who couldn't coach.
Monie had won the ARL title with Parramatta and cleaned up all the silverware in Britain with Wigan over a four-year period.
Frank took Canterbury league to unprecedented wins over Auckland and has arguably been the most successful Kiwi coach of all time. Apart from his ability as a coach, Frank is respected throughout the sporting world for his sincerity, honesty and integrity. If you couldn't play for Frank Endacott when he looked you in the eye and asked for your best effort, you couldn't play for anyone.
And that's the point: the Warriors simply can't play. Not consistently, anyway.
For short periods and occasionally even for the odd game they can mix it with the best, but week in and week out for 80 minutes they simply haven't got a clue.
It doesn't matter who you get to coach them, it will always be the same. There is a culture, a tradition of inconsistency now established at the Warriors that stops the team from achieving.
There is no point now in pointing fingers at referees, Ian Robson, Matthew Ridge, Polynesian players or any of the dozens of other excuses that have been thrown up to explain away the Warriors' losing habit over the past five years.
It is now time to accept some facts. The most important is that the Warriors lose no matter who coaches them. Mark Graham is an icon of league, probably the most widely respected Kiwi of all time. They can't win for him.
Perhaps the only thing they may play for is their own future. If the players were told that the club will be wound up if the team don't make the playoffs it may be sufficient motivation to get them to perform consistently.
Most of them are surely wise enough to recognise that if the Warriors fail again this year, no Australian club would be interested in signing any of them, with the exception of Stacey Jones.
There is a real case for winding-up the Warriors for the good of the game. The club gives league a reputation for losing, whingeing and chucking it in. That is not a true reflection on a game that has battled for years for recognition and been played by blokes who never took a backward step.
Imagine where league would be now if the same amount of money that has been poured into the Warriors over the past five years had been spent on establishing school competitions and enhancing provincial or club competitions.
Too much of the sponsors' money, and now Tainui money, has gone into the pockets of too few. Many of the so-called elite players who have earned small fortunes while at the Warriors never fronted for the club. The vast majority of them now live overseas.
They did the club a disservice and in turn the club has done the game in this country enormous damage. It has dragged so much focus and resource away from school, club and provincial league that it has done irrevocable damage to the game itself.
No, Mark Graham shouldn't resign if the club can't make the playoffs.
What should happen if that eventuates is that the club itself should be wound up.
* Murray Deaker is host of Radio ZB's Sportstalk.
Rugby League: Time to wind up this club with the culture of losing
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