As bad as the Warriors' NRL season is going, it's 2021 which should freak people out.
The latest moves being considered in the halls of power supposedly include allocating the Warriors 24 home games next year, as compensation for having to live across the ditch for most of thisseason.
A more pertinent question is this: What if the Warriors are asked to live across the ditch again next year?
Far from getting closer to a transtasman travel bubble, Australia is experiencing an alarming spike in Covid-19 cases.
Sport has done its best to rush back, but under these circumstances it must also learn to wait in line. Home games for the Warriors could be out of the question, at least for some of the year.
Far from contemplating 24 home games, the Warriors must now start preparing to shift its whole operation to Australia next year.
They can't refuse to play in the NRL, and they need to be in the only place where they have the ability to sign serious player reinforcements. They need to adopt a new attitude, a new spirit, and jump into the task, boots and all.
The only way to ensure that is to move to Australia for now, and start preparing families for the shift. The alternative is a club which could completely fall apart if it is forced to take what is shaping as a depleted and divided team into next year's competition.
The Warriors were smashed by the Sharks. Photo / Photosport
There are sports watchers who even believe that the Warriors should be permanently based in Australia, while still playing home games here and retaining strong Kiwi links.
That's a subject for another day, although the virus might open the door to that kind of thinking.
Right now, the Warriors are skating on very thin ice.
With so much doubt over the 2021 season and a new coach yet to be appointed, it is hard to see them attracting top players to turn the results around while providing the proper development environment for emerging stars.
One thing the Warriors should never do – however bad it might get - is quit on the 2020 season although this sentiment, being expressed in some quarters, is understandable in such a crisis.
Professional sport is all about finding a way, getting off the canvas, staying in the fight.
It's best to hang on to any semblance of honour - and keep paying the bills. To quit now would also throw the whole competition into disarray, the consequences of which would hit the Warriors as hard as anyone.
Surely men like Roger Tuivasa-Sheck would hate to traipse through Auckland Airport, tail between legs, as the cameras scanned for any sign of a tear on their premature return. The imagery alone would be disastrous.
Former Warrior Shaun Johnson celebrates during the Sharks' big victory on Sunday. Photo/Photosport
Roberto Duran, one of the greatest and most courageous boxers in history, will forever be remembered for his alleged cry of "no mas" against Sugar Ray Leonard.
For the Warriors as a club to cry "no more", to have that stain on them, is unthinkable.
They won't be the first NRL club to go on a long losing run. They won't even be the first Warriors team to go on a long losing run.
No wonder some players are already quitting though. They are being fed too much BS about how tough their lives are. You hear it everywhere, from the loaded media questions to opponents' words of sympathy and constant references from commentators.
Yes, their situation is not ideal and a stern test of character for a club which has bordered on a farce for 25 years thanks to wild mismanagement.
But the players are still leading interesting lives, and earning great money for their faraway families.
How does this compare, for instance, against the medical people around the world doing long hours, days on end, in dangerous virus situations, hardly ever seeing their families?
Life can be tough, even without the dreadful virus.
Come on people. The Warriors are hardly being sent down a coal mine every day.
Yeah, yeah
A prediction: The Pasifika Super Rugby team in south Auckland will never happen. If it does, it will fail.
Once the consortium of former players contemplating a franchise here fully understands the vipers' nest it would be getting into, it will run a mile.
New Zealand Rugby is ruthless in protecting the All Blacks and snaring all the best players. A Pasifika team would be trampled underfoot.
Vulnerable rugby nations such as Tonga, Samoa and Fiji need protecting, enhancing and indeed treasuring at test level. A Pasifika team is a cop-out for a sport run by vested interests which won't make the hard decisions.
Those small countries would be foolish to trust NZR's intentions or priorities. NZR has never offered Pacific Islands rugby anything more than token gestures while raiding their resources, often through utilising our school system.
To be fair, or cautious, few real details of the proposal have emerged, for instance over how the contracts would work, or eligibility.
But it looks more like a minefield than a gold field.
And it has the makings of another colonialist trap, with men in offices a long way from Suva, Nuku'alofa and Apia dominating the decisions.
A Pasifika team sounds great on paper, which is what this is all about. PR.
