Warriors owner Mark Robinson. Photo / Photosport
OPINION:
Coach Nathan Brown has gone, but the man who really needs shunting out of the way is Warriors owner Mark Robinson if deep and lasting change is to be achieved.
Brown's assistant Stacey Jones will take over for the rest of the year, which won't change much and could be an unfortunate disaster.
Kristian Woolf, the ground-breaking Tongan coach currently enjoying success with St Helens, has emerged as a potential permanent frontrunner, an interesting choice.
Woolf would certainly seem to hold potential, but so have so many others. It always comes unstuck.
And long-game NRL club strategies are a world apart from quick-hit representative assignments and England's more pedestrian Super League.
Here's the bigger point.
A small core of key figures drive any successful NRL club, and the job title isn't important.
Melbourne Storm general manager of football Frank Ponissi or Sydney Roosters chairman Nick Politis are masters of the marionettes, alongside outstanding coaches of course.
The Warriors' last taste of success, over a decade ago, was built around three men who formed a tight unit: rising coach Ivan Cleary, director and Cleary mentor John Hart, and under-20s maestro John Ackland.
Are current Warriors CEO Cameron George or general manager of football Craig Hodges men of this ilk? At the moment the jury would have to say no. Woolf alone won't change anything.
The Warriors are a club flirting dangerously with extinction. Their current form is as bad as it has ever been, and this year they are the common denominator in some of the worst matches you are ever likely to see. There just doesn't seem a lot of point to their miserable existence anymore.
They had the amazing potential to give New Zealand its only true high-profile professional sporting experience, a real club to follow in a country dominated by rugby union's branch office system.
Yet the game was better off in New Zealand when Kiwis from all walks of life excitedly followed Manly, Canberra and Brisbane.
History is repeating - Robinson's ownership is not living up to his bizarre expectations, and down to what anyone who has been around for a while half expected.
From the moment he joined the control room, Robinson - who runs the insulation firm his father founded - was talking like a man who wanted to appear as a great sports club owner, without having a clue what that entailed.
While his Autex Industries - who have backed league for a long time - was still just a part-owner, he predicted in 2018 that the Warriors would make the finals in the following three years and "we're expecting to get one, maybe two [titles]".
There are even reports of Bedouin nomads getting a good giggle out of that one. (I've always tried to assume that this was a misquote, it is so preposterous.)
Robinson's one smart move was to sack coach Steve Kearney mid-season, in 2020. Kearney had to go.
The owner was lucky because the coach-in-waiting was Todd Payten, an outstanding head coach in the making.
But Robinson couldn't make the most of this good fortune.
What followed is typical: Payten quit, for a better offer, or maybe to get away from the craziness.
Special consultant Phil Gould also quit. Disloyal recruitment boss Peter O'Sullivan also quit. Form prop Matt Lodge also quit mid-season along with a payout. (Lodge used what must have been a weird conversation with Robinson in a bar as leverage to do so.)
Horror of horrors, Roger Tuivasa-Sheck also quit. Players come, players go, with little rhyme or reason.
Robinson's ownership even includes shooing away locally produced players such as Isaiah Papali'i and Peta Hiku who immediately star for title-chasing teams elsewhere.
The owner has also said some things which have clearly upset players. His club lacks sufficient loyalty, stability, themes and intelligence.
In other words, how would Kristian Woolf go alongside Robinson, embattled CEO George and Hodges? Will they click?
More likely it will remain a club of hot air and cold form.
Desperation, a weak position, means they try too many marginal recruits, like the erratic Lodge, 'Krazy' Kane Evans and Shaun Johnson on his half-hearted farewell tour. In the end, the cracks not only show but they are all you can see.
And into this void tumbled the likeable but hapless Nathan Brown who probably fell on his sword, after Robinson backed him for the rest of the season just last week.
Interim coach Jones could have done what he did so brilliantly as a player - look for a gap and run like hell.
Jones is a club legend doing his bit. But nothing I've seen or felt or heard about Jones has indicated that he is top coaching material. And that's with all due respect to his incredible career as a player. His legion of fans will hope he emerges okay, which is unlikely.
Awaiting him is a schedule that includes two clashes against the perfect Penrith Panthers, and another date with the Melbourne Storm who smashed Brown's Warriors into oblivion.
What the Warriors should have done is lure someone like Shane Flanagan - the premiership-winning coach who is doing a stint as TV commentator - to step in for the rest of the year.
And whoever the permanent new boss is, he will start off with about six players definitely worth keeping - that's how low this squad has gone.
Tohu Harris, Josh Curran, Reece Walsh, Jazz Tevaga, Addin Fonua-Blake…make that five. There is a small group of players around them who are okay, but not good enough to make a difference.
But it's the front office that needs changing first in a code competing against people honed in Sydney's ruthless sports business market and NRL lore.
Robinson must find the clever, tough nut or two needed to save this club, then get out of the way.
For what it's worth though, in a crisis, something about Woolf says he might have the magic touch. Might as well finish on a ridiculously positive note.
On the surface, the Warriors draw for the 2025 season is quite kind