Graham Lowe: Cleary stewing on sidelines

Already this season the Warriors players have experienced joy, sadness, delight and disappointment.

But their coach Ivan Cleary and his assistant John Ackland are having to endure a different emotion entirely. They have stepped through the doors of coaching hell. It is only round six of the NRL and the Warriors have now lost three games in a row.

I doubt there was a better-prepared club before the season kicked off and both these men had every right to feel quietly happy with the progress the Warriors had made.

But that is the thing about coaching at any level, let alone the NRL - you are allowed to feel happy, but never satisfied.

So before the NRL kicked off in round one coaches such as Cleary, Ackland, Manly's Des Hasler and the Rooster's Brad Fittler were all happy but none would have been satisfied. The worry of the job is relentless and so much of the outcome is out of your hands.

Last Sunday, the Warriors eventually managed to come up with a respectable 24-22 loss against the Knights but the problem was, they didn't play their best footy until the last quarter of the game.

However, that scoreline will have given the Warriors coaches little to be happy with because throughout most of the 80 minutes of the game, the Knights were allowed to be in control of it.

Fortunately, most of the Warriors' woes against the Knights are fixable, however there is an area of concern for me.

There were lapses in concentration by some of their players and in all honesty, coaches need a magic wand to fix that. Either that or all of the players need to make an honest personal assessment of their individual contributions, because only they hold the escape key to the doors of coaching hell.

From personal experience I know what that heat feels like and at times I thought I was being incinerated.

One of the best players I coached at Wigan was the former Great Britain international centre Joe Lydon.

But to this day I have never been able to understand a decision he made in a tight match against Hull at the Boulevard one cold Sunday afternoon.

In the 79th minute of a game in which we were only just managing to stay ahead, we received a penalty 5m centre-field in our own half.

All we needed to do was tap the ball and take a couple of tackles and the game was ours.

For some reason Joe (who was acting captain at the time) decided to have a shot at goal for the two points (which we didn't need).

Not only did the kick fall short, but Hull regathered it, ran the length of the field and scored under our posts to the death-knell sound of the full-time siren. We lost a game we had already won.

As I recall I said very little in the dressing shed after the game; I didn't need to. The players had thrown the game - and two points - away. Only a magic wand could have saved us from that fate.

But more was still to come, because on the motorway just out of Hull on the way back to Wigan, an owl managed to fly into and smash the windscreen of our team bus. We were delayed on the side of the motorway for a couple of hours waiting for a replacement bus. I've always wondered about that day. Was I being given a message from the gods of coaching?

Joe came to see me at home the next morning and apologised for the decision he made. To be fair to him, though his decision had ultimately cost us the game, the team had put itself in a risky position by not finishing off Hull and that should never have happened. As it turned out we regrouped and went on to a great season.

Sometimes it just feel the gods are against you.

However, the Warriors players have only themselves to blame for the risky position they find themselves in and only they can remedy it.

I accept that Steve Price has been an enormous loss for the team when he has been out injured, but in saying that, there have been a few disastrous individual decisions made by some of the Warriors players in recent weeks, that only honest self-examination can fix.

On form so far this season, the Roosters are considered favourites against the Warriors on Sunday by many.

They have won every second game so far this season and their coach, Fittler, must think he is riding a roller-coaster. Potentially his side can beat anyone on their day, but, like the Warriors, consistency is a problem for the Roosters.

The possible NSW Origin combination of Mitchell Pierce at halfback and five-eighth Braith Anasta do give the Roosters an advantage in the halves on Sunday. Both are in good form and read the game as well as anyone. Added to that, each has a great kicking game.

But it is aggression and domination in the forwards where the Warriors can win or lose.

For the Roosters, serial bad boy Willie Mason is the key. He is a character and, I think, great for the game. While too many forwards play in a robotic manner, Mason is capable of producing an individual intensity similar to that with which the former Australian firebrand Mark Geyer used to terrify opposition forwards.

He does have the ability to dictate how hard the forward battle is going to be, so it is crucial the Warriors forwards limit his bulldozing runs.

Much has been made of the speed of the game this year and it is certainly quick, but I can see some old-fashioned individual forward contests deciding the outcome on Sunday.

Quite bluntly, each of the Warriors forwards needs to make sure he out-muscles, out-hits and out-plays his opposite because this Roosters forward pack is a good and tough one.

There is plenty to like about Sunday's game in what should be an even contest. And it is in games of this nature that being at home has to be an advantage. Respect is earned at home and you definitely don't allow visitors to come in and throw their weight around. If necessary you teach them some manners.

LOWE'S CRYSTAL BALL
* Vatuvei gives fans something to smile about
* Warriors and Roosters all square at half-time
* Warriors courageous, but simply down on firepower against a full-strength Roosters mob
* Tigers and Storm go into golden point