League: You just can't keep a good prop down

With the ink barely dry on his Warriors deal signed in 2004, Steve Price immediately talked about making a difference at his new club and taking on new challenges.

After 11 years at the Bulldogs that traversed equal doses of the club's success and shame, the first 12 months of Price's Warriors career have hardly been easy. If he wanted challenges, the Warriors was the place to come.

Of course, they finished a disappointing 11th last season, coach Tony Kemp got the sack and then there was the salary cap debacle when Price and Ruben Wiki were portrayed as the chief culprits.

If you expected Price to lament the happenings of the past 12 months, however, you'd be wrong.

The Warriors skipper plays a good game and talks a good one, too. And talks. And talks. You'd think Price might have been a philosopher in a past life, such is his gift of the gab and relative depth of thought.

"I'm having such a good time," Price blurted out enthusiastically. "It's been exciting."

For most of Price's Bulldogs career, he believed he would always be a one-club man. Now the 32-year-old is weighing up whether the Warriors will be his last club.

Ruben Wiki signed on for another year which will see him play until he is at least 35 but Price is not so sure.

"I need to decide whether this is my last contract," he explained in reference to his current deal which runs out at the end of 2007. "I'm certainly getting closer to the end.

"I don't believe in flogging a dead horse just to play footy. I don't want to be a cripple when I retire. The way I feel right now I would love to keep playing but so many things change.

"I will probably look at it this time next year."

The future is something Price considers very seriously. Top of his list is his young family but he's also made no secret of the fact he would like to go into club administration or take on a commercial role. He's even expressed an interest in becoming NRL chief executive one day.

The recent salary cap saga was not the first time he had been involved in a major breach - he was also dragged through the coals when captain of the Bulldogs in 2002. It's fair to say Price was a little worried about what affect a second scandal would have on his reputation.

"When the salary cap issues came up it was obvious, even if I was or wasn't in the middle of it, that I was going to be a target because of where I had been before," he explained. "The Warriors were over the cap in 2004 but Ruben and I were the ones to blame even though we weren't here. But I'm big and ugly enough to handle that.

"I was just disappointed with some of the things said in Australia because I want to be involved in the game when I retire. There were things being thrown up that could tarnish my future and reputation in the game. That disappointed me because anyone who thought I would deliberately go around the cap after what I had been through [in 2002] was absolutely nuts.

"One of the reasons I came here was because I was confident there'd be no problems at the Warriors."

How wrong he was.

The problem now for the club, among other things, is building a winning culture because everything else the Warriors do - including sponsorship, recruitment, crowds and the balance sheet - is built on results on the field.

Far from being downhearted about things, Price is convinced the club can turn things around.

He accepts he has a major role to play, not only on the field where heading into last night's match against the Rabbitohs he was the leading NRL player in terms of total number of hit-ups and metres gained, but also off the field. You could say he's taken on something of a father figure role for the young players at the club.

"When I came here I could tell morale was low but now we have the right ingredients," he said. "We have the potential to do well - although potential is something I love and hate because it means you are showing people you can be great but you haven't showed them all the time.

"What I wanted out of my time here was to make a bit of a difference. I'm not going to turn things overnight but I'd love to help these kids out so they can become more consistent."

"I think our biggest problem is self-belief, individually. That's going to take time for the guys to start to realise just how good they can be."

Price played his 245th first-grade game last night and is on the verge of becoming the 50th player to notch 250. It has been challenging - but he wouldn't have it any other way.