KEY POINTS:
Grant Rovelli, all 176cm and 82kgs of him, has been carrying the burden of blame for much of what's wrong at the Warriors.
It's unfair criticism.
As the accompanying game-by-game figures show, when the Warriors forwards win the battle up front, the team wins. When the forwards don't make ground the opposition can use superior speed off the defensive line to stifle anything the backs try and do.
When the Warriors give away too many penalties and turnovers they do too much tackling, then the forwards get fatigued, they don't make ground and the attack falters.
It's not just Rovelli, but he sees the failures close-up, feels for the forwards and shares the blame around the team.
Like all players, he maintains he doesn't read criticism in the papers or listen to it on radio. But they all do.
"I try and stay away from that, I listen to what my coaches and teammates tell me," Rovelli said this week before the trip to Newcastle.
Last week his dad, Troy, football manager for the Roosters, was on the sideline as the Warriors slumped 38-12 and the young halfback turned in a shocker of a kick that gave Shaun Kenny-Dowall a runaway try. Not much was said afterwards.
"I hate losing to them," the halfback said of the Roosters, his old club. "Fourteen points in the first 10 minutes, it's always going to be hard after that. Then we did pretty well to get back in the game. I put a s**t kick in, they go 80 metres and score - that shouldn't happen."
Rovelli said the team was in this position, backs to the wall, last season and coming through that had stiffened their resolve this year. "We want to keep on improving. You learn every week, you learn more from a bad kick than from a good one. When we're going through a tough patch it's a learning curve for all the boys. It's also when you learn more about yourself."
They had the right personnel, Rovelli believed, including himself in that. They had proved they could win against top sides. They simply had to keep working hard at training, work hard on the field - "work hard for your teammates," he said, "do the little things right".
Rovelli, 25, is signed through next year and, with Lance Hohaia filling in for the injured Wade McKinnon at fullback, there is little prospect of change barring injury.
