Rugby League: NRL commentator Phil Gould offers grim warning for New Zealand Warriors

NRL commentator and former coach Phil Gould has blasted the New Zealand Warriors saying the club should be in the top four every year but face another 25 years of pain.

Gould was responding to a tweet after Australian media reported yesterday that Sharks prop Toby Rudolf was set to do a backflip on his new deal with the Warriors which begins next season.

A fan asked Gould, who won two titles as a coach, how he would help the Warriors turn things around.

"After 25 years, the Warriors really should be the strongest club in the NRL. Should be regular top 4. It's a whole country. Unless someone starts now, we will be saying the same thing in another 25 years," Gould tweeted yesterday.

The Warriors currently sit 14th on the NRL table with one win from four games after being blanked for the second time in 2020 when they were defeated 26-0 by the Panthers last Friday.

It's not the first time Gould has shared his views on the Warriors' progress since their inaugural season in 1995.

Two years ago when the club won their first five games to start the season, Gould told Channel 9 that it was finally the changing of the Warriors.

"When people ask you every year how the Warriors are going to do, you sort of smirk a little bit and say 'Oh yeah, they've got potential if they got themselves fit and got themselves organised and learn the game a little bit better," Gould said at the time.

"This is what we feared the Warriors could be. Now if this goes on to be a part of the culture of the club for the next 10 years, they could produce anything. Absolutely anything. And what they've done is wasted the last 25 years, or however how long they've been in the competition because they've never got their heads around what really needed to be done. "

Following that dream start to the 2018 season, the Warriors finished eighth before losing their first playoff appearance since 2011.