Ali Leiataua reacts to defeat against the Canberra Raiders. Photo / Photosport
Warriors wāhine unlikely saviours for Auckland club next season; Springboks World Cup duo go beserk at UFC showdown and Eden Park’s dubious claims continue.
OPINION
Who would have thought it? What a difference 12 months can make in Warriors land.
Admittedly, that’s a sentence that could have been written this time last year when a resurgent Warriors outfit were about to storm into the NRL finals, ultimately falling just one game short of the big dance.
Now it’s a line being trotted out again – only this time in a far less flattering light.
Sadly, on the strength of what we’ve seen in recent weeks, club icon Shaun Johnson and the 2024 version of Andrew Webster’s Warriors are likely to limp to the end of a frustrating home campaign this Friday night when they face the in-form Bulldogs.
A loss at Mt Smart in the final home game of a sellout season would simply put an exclamation mark on what can only be viewed as a colossal, missed opportunity.
The damage incurred from the club’s failure to kick on from last year’s hard-fought credibility boost won’t truly be known until the 2025 season ticket campaign is done.
It’s a memorable feat to become the first NRL club to sell out an entire home season but the masses who boost the Warriors’ crowd stocks when they are on a winning streak are a notoriously fickle lot.
Will they return next year... especially with crowd favourites Johnson and Jazz Tevaga (the former retiring, the latter unwanted), prop Addin Fonua-Blake in the rival colours of the Sharks and Tohu Harris likely retired?
Now is the real test of commitment for the new Mt Smart faithful.
Sports Insider is loath to strongly criticise the Warriors, even though they clearly went backwards this season.
I’m of the personal view that the NRL Premiership is one of the toughest club competitions, if not the toughest to win anywhere in world sport.
Last year’s grand finalists the Brisbane Broncos have also had an even more dismal year than the Warriors, reflecting the turbulent nature of the comp.
In 2023, the Bulldogs, Friday night’s opposition, were competition strugglers. This year, they lie on the edge of the top four. Much can change in a year for many clubs.
The Warriors had a lot of cruel luck this season and, as a result, left between eight and 12 competition points out on the paddock.
Whether it was injuries, generational freakish acts of athleticism from the opposition (Melbourne’s Xavier Coates match-winner in the last minute of round three), goal-kicking blues or Bunker incompetence (the golden-point loss to the Bulldogs with an overlooked late tackle on Te Maire Martin), not much went the Warriors’ way.
There does appear to be a disconnect between the coaching staff and playing group, though.
The failure to develop the team’s attack from the 2023 season, the sweeping backline plays so easily read and picked off by opposition defences in 2024 and the amount of costly penalties conceded for deliberate obstruction running reflect that reality.
Webster is going through what one of his predecessors, Todd Payten, endured at the North Queensland Cowboys after turning down a coaching extension at the Warriors three years ago to take up the reins in Townsville.
Payten turned the Cowboys into a force in his first season, surging into the finals (sound familiar?).
But the Cowboys fell away in his second season in charge as Payten and his players faced new expectations. In particular, attacking confidence dipped sharply (again, sound familiar?)
Encouragingly, Payten’s 2024 Cowboys outfit have been in cracking recent form, having already secured a position in the finals series and now regarded as among the best attacking teams in the competition.
Let’s see if Webster can replicate that feat next season before we too swiftly judge him.
The positive from this season has been the exposure to the top grade of a fresh batch of Warriors youngsters, some of whom look to have rare promise.
They include brave and slippery fullback Taine Tuaupiki, centre Ali Leiataua and rugged forwards Demitric Sifikula, Zyon Maiu’u, Jacob Laban, Leka Halisima and Kalani Going. All look likely customers.
It’s an as-yet-unseen payoff for the Warriors’ increased investment into player pathways, which has not come cheaply.
The club also has a ready-made marketing weapon to seduce wavering fans for 2025.
The return of the Warriors wāhine to the NRLW, the NRL’s women’s competition, next year after a five-year absence is bound to attract attention as the fledging female Premiership grows in exposure and Kiwi-bred stars.
Unsurprisingly, given their talent level, aspiring or current Black Ferns Sevens and XVs stars are making a huge impact in the recent opening rounds of this season’s NRLW: Paris Olympics gold medal winners like Stacey Waaka, wowing them in Brisbane Broncos colours, and Tyla King, doing a similar job for the St George-Illawarra Dragons.
Another Ferns gold medallist, prolific try-scoring winger Tenika Willison, is also in on the action, scoring a typically evasive try for the Newcastle Knights last weekend.
It is surely a given that the Warriors will be able to assemble a stacked roster of Black Ferns and Kiwi Ferns, as well as aspiring dual code prodigies, for next season.
Double-headers at Mt Smart when the male and female seasons cross over should help retain crowd interest at the back end of next season.
A Portia Woodman-Wickliffe thrown in for a debut in league wouldn’t hurt alongside the presence of Waaka and a few others.
With so much Kiwi talent in the NRLW (the Broncos fielded six Kiwis including Waaka in their starting team, and Newcastle sported six last weekend), the Warriors wāhine have a solid chance of possibly cracking the Premiership code sooner than the men.
The threat of a Warriors women’s squad scooping up Aotearoa’s best talent is just another thing to keep New Zealand Rugby’s senior executives awake at night.
While Sports Insider took its mid-winter break, the Perth-based Western Bears firmed as the 18th team to join the NRL, supposedly in 2027, with a franchise from Papua New Guinea to follow the season after.
That leaves just one franchise spot left to complete the NRL’s desired expansion to a 20-team competition by 2030.
It’s time for New Zealand’s bids to get their skates on ahead of any risk we get squeezed out by other factions lobbying for another team from Brisbane or one from Central Queensland.
Previous columns on this topic have noted the Warriors’ apparent determination to ensure the 20th team isn’t a second New Zealand team.
It is muscle they have not earned the right to employ.
A Kiwi team with only one Warriors player (fullback Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad) defeated the World Cup champions, the Australians, 30-0 in Hamilton last October. That is the current strength and depth of Kiwi talent across the other NRL clubs.
New Zealand deserves a second NRL franchise on production of talent alone.
The Warriors’ self-interest should not be able to beat that down, no matter whether the 20th team is based in the South Island, Wellington or even Auckland.
Springboks legends Eben Etzebeth and Siya Kolisi could have cage-fighting futures if their animated performances on the edge of the Octagon supporting countryman Dricus du Plessis are any indication.
The two-time Rugby World Cup winning pair walked du Plessis out at a raucous Perth Arena last Sunday, where he successfully defended his UFC middleweight champion’s belt against our own Israel Adesanya.
Kolisi and Etzebeth became very excited during the bout and when du Plessis choked Adesanya into submission, both went berserk.
Etzebeth in particular prowled around the perimeter of the Octagon looking like he wanted to fight anybody who had doubted his man!
Both joined du Plessis inside the Octagon for the immediate celebrations.
It was a mixed UFC 305 for Kiwi fans. Adesanya’s defeat was humbling in the face of an absorbing fight which he looked to be taking control of.
Whether the 35-year-old “Last Stylebender” can come back from this setback will be one of the compelling Kiwi sports stories of 2025.
But in Dan “The Hangman” Hooker and Kai Kara-France, New Zealand – or more accurately Auckland’s City Kickboxing fighting troupe – have two unlikely flagbearers with growing popularity internationally.
I can remember a young Hooker hustling sports reporters more than a decade ago for some love towards mixed martial arts. Many didn’t pay him much attention and it was too easy to dismiss his obsession towards the craft as misplaced, given the Octagon’s early days of mayhem.
But Hooker is incredibly tenacious. That he is now in the top five of the tough lightweight division after a typically gritty victory over a more favoured opponent in Perth underlines how he cannot be underestimated.
Hooker is now in the frame for a championship tilt, as is Kara-France, whose comeback from what looked a shaky UFC career is even more remarkable.
Kara-France’s demolition of local hero Steve Erceg was the 12th knockout win from his 25 victories to date but, more importantly, was his first since surprise back-to-back losses amplified by concussion issues.
He was forced to take time out and that persuaded some critics to write off his career. Now he has a likely title shot against the reigning flyweight champion, Alexandre Pantoja of Brazil.
Manchester United are poised to turn their backs on an Old Trafford rebuild and construct a brand new 100,000-seat stadium next door.
The new stadium will cost more than £2 billion ($4.24b) and take about six years to complete. Being located next to Old Trafford means the club can use the existing venue until the new one is ready.
How is this relevant to New Zealand? Because it’s a key element of the Eden Park v the waterfront stadium debate that has not had enough light shone on it.
Sports Insider is aware of at least two public occasions Eden Park CEO Nick Saunter spoke where he implied strongly that Eden Park’s event activity and annual revenues would not be strongly impacted by a rebuild (which includes a roof).
The talk has been of “minimal disruption” and an unchanged “revenue profile”.
If these lofty claims are true, Eden Park has managed to do something that Man U hasn’t – a business-as-usual commercial performance while building a new stadium around you.
United decided they couldn’t afford the marked drop in revenue from an Old Trafford rebuild because sections of the ground would be closed while being revamped, forcing the club to have to play elsewhere while work is taking place.
This conclusion came after the club’s chief operating officer visited a number of the world’s leading stadiums and consulted owners or those principally involved in a venue’s genesis.
Maybe she should have paid a visit to the Eden Park operating offices in Sandringham.
Despite the fact that three stands will have to be demolished and replaced with new ones before a roof is then attached, Eden Park would have us believe that there will still be just as many rock concerts, rugby matches and other fun as there has been in recent years.
That’s some claim.
Of course, the alternative reality doesn’t fit Eden Park’s narrative of its chief selling point to the public – that Eden Park 2.1 is a far less expensive option than building a new stadium on the waterfront.
If that claim factors in no loss of revenue at all during the three years or more it will take to remodel Eden Park, we are once again being sold a pup by the grand masters of illusion.
Here is a timelapse of the four-year rebuild of Barcelona’s famous Camp Nou venue, due to open later this year.
Eden Park is smaller-scale but proposes a comparable rebuild. So something similar can be done and you can run the stadium on a business-as-usual basis?
That’s a Tui poster.
South Africa: The country itself might be a basket case but the indomitable roar of the African heart can’t be denied. It carried Dricus du Plessis to victory over Israel Adesanya and looms as a major challenge for the All Blacks over the next fortnight.
Wrexham FC: The newly-promoted Welsh club owned by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney are off to a flyer in the English League One championship, winning their first game at home and drawing away to heavyweights Bolton Wanderers.
Chris Wood and Ben Old: The two All Whites continue to turn heads in Europe. Wood scored his first EPL goal of the new season for Nottingham Forest last weekend and Old got on the scoresheet for the first time with new French Ligue 1 club Saint-Etienne.
The Kiwi will coach Wales through the 2025 Six Nations.