Paul Lewis: Clean slate required to wash away stink

It's hard to remember a team so keen for the competition to start as the Warriors now are for the NRL to get under way. Not because they are chomping at the bit to make up those four points - well, that too - but because they figure the on-field action will take the heat off the board and management in the long-running salary cap saga.

It's possible, too, to feel sorry for them. They have plainly been trying to be open and transparent and have been talking to all and sundry. You cannot accuse them of the media strategy of the previous management (Lock it down. Sweep it under the carpet. Maintain an air of injured dignity. Wait it out. Wait for the sewage to slip down the pipe and quietly into the harbour. Plop. There it goes).

No, the Warriors are keeping up a semblance of transparency by nodding vaguely in the direction of the previous management but are outlining very little of the detail of the Warriors' salary cap breach, nor what the club is doing about it, nor who was involved. The devil lurks in the details.

As a strategy, it has some merits. It's probably good enough for many of the fans, some (maybe even most) of whom will be distracted when the on-field action starts, particularly if the Warriors can summon up a collective unity built around being docked points.

But it's a big gamble. If the on-field stuff doesn't happen right, then the collective gaze of the fans, sponsors, media and all will be back on the 'front office'.

As a club, the Warriors need credibility, on and off the field. Here are the main perceptions of the club after talking to those in the game, sources in and close to the club, fans and more:

The Warriors shot themselves in both feet.

Few believe the current administration and board didn't know about the breaches - and if they didn't, they should have.

A million bucks over the salary cap and they still came 11th? Muffled laughter.

In this column last week, the point was made that the way to redemption was to make a clean breast of it. Outline what happened - exactly what happened - and why. Outline, too, what needs to happen to make it under the salary cap for 2006. Do the Warriors have to shift more players? If not, why not? Show us the relevant detail. The Warriors are saying they can't say too much because of player privacy and fear of defamation.

But here are the questions that remain unanswered:

Which players were involved? How did they breach the cap?

What do the Warriors now have to do to get under the 2006 cap?

Will the club have to lose more players (see story p69) to make it under the cap?

Chairman Maurice Kidd goes part of the way to answering this in today's issue. But the club needs to do more. Get it all so much out there that there can be no mistake - the Warriors would be seen to have admitted their errors and told us exactly what they doing to fix it. That is how you earn credibility and respect from your various audiences - not by hunkering down into the mud, like the African lungfish. In times of drought, the lungfish seals itself in the mud and enters a state of hibernation, broken only when the rains come again and create rivers and ponds.

The Warriors administration is plainly hoping they'll uncurl themselves from the mud at that point and proclaim a new future. Again, it's a risky ploy. If the team doesn't perform in the NRL, the Warriors may find themselves unable to emerge from their mud-caked sanctuary.

They are trying to be open - even wheeling out Eric Watson himself. He called a phone-in press conference this week, where he managed to say a great deal without actually saying much, although he did say the club lost "about a million dollars" last year and are facing a "multimillion dollar" loss this year. Interesting, and a step in the right direction, but it's hardly the full Monty.

What we need now is full and frank disclosure of what the Warriors have done and exactly what they are doing to get back on to the rails. It's all a bit vague, all a bit grey. The Warriors have an overall perception problem relating back to the previous administration which involves intangibles like trust.

For all their talking, the Warriors are not saying all that much, really. If the Warriors want respect, they will open the doors, the books, the whole shooting match.

Unclog the toilets and scrub the floors shiny, boys. But don't just show us the clean floors - show us what's in the bucket. Only with full disclosure will you get respect. Fear of defamation and claims of player privacy don't cut it. There are ways.

Lungfish can remain in their state of stasis for a long time. There is a problem here, however. If the drought persists, the lungfish can perish - poisoned by its own urine. I leave it to you to draw the parallel there.

Read Paul Lewis' new sports column in The Listener.

-HERALD ON SUNDAY