Where to from here?

[Rich102]

We have major issues at the club and nobody seems to be identifying the problems.

1. This malise has been around for at least 4 years. Despite a rich talent pool we have only made the final twice in twenty years - and lost both games. The juniors we reject are going to other clubs, improving ad coming back to beat us. A lot of our players don't improve greatly whilst here. There is something wrong in the culture here.

2. We have had our best success with 'Aussie journeymen'. Or local players who spent their early years at Australian clubs. I think we have too many of our own juniors in the squad. For example the Lousi brothers, Havili etc. who haven't received the coaching to bring them to NRL standard. Even Manu still makes glaring errors which are not corrected.

3. Recruitment. Doyle has made two major signings for next year. But who is scouting the emerging talent? We need a local scout, a UK based scout and an Australian based scout.

4. The coach. McFadden came here as an assistant and got promoted to head coach too soon. He hasn't got the experience and it shows. The current team run around with no apparent plan or else they don't know the plan. Why was Iro reappointed? He had been undermining Bluey. Surely the should have been enough to blackball him. Cleary was dropped because he had gone as far as he could with his squad, his results weren't good and his style of football was boring. Since then the succession has been a shambles.
Now McFadden'n team is playing worse football than Cleary's. We are going backwards.

5. Injuries. Yes we have had a bad season for injuries but we are now going to cull our squad hard. What happens next year when we get injuries?

6. Doyle appears to give a s***. Nobody else seems to.

7. It's not rocket science. You pick the best. Coach, players, trainers, support staff etc. And you set standards. If they don't meet them you replace them with someone who does. The club deserves nothing less and the fans deserve nothing less. If this can't happen then I would like to see another NZ city given the franchise.

Your thoughts welcome.

 

[Skinner]

We have major issues at the club and nobody seems to be identifying the problems.

1. This malise has been around for at least 4 years. Despite a rich talent pool we have only made the final twice in twenty years - and lost both games. The juniors we reject are going to other clubs, improving ad coming back to beat us. A lot of our players don't improve greatly whilst here. There is something wrong in the culture here.

2. We have had our best success with 'Aussie journeymen'. Or local players who spent their early years at Australian clubs. I think we have too many of our own juniors in the squad. For example the Lousi brothers, Havili etc. who haven't received the coaching to bring them to NRL standard. Even Manu still makes glaring errors which are not corrected.

3. Recruitment. Doyle has made two major signings for next year. But who is scouting the emerging talent? We need a local scout, a UK based scout and an Australian based scout.

4. The coach. McFadden came here as an assistant and got promoted to head coach too soon. He hasn't got the experience and it shows. The current team run around with no apparent plan or else they don't know the plan. Why was Iro reappointed? He had been undermining Bluey. Surely the should have been enough to blackball him. Cleary was dropped because he had gone as far as he could with his squad, his results weren't good and his style of football was boring. Since then the succession has been a shambles.
Now McFadden'n team is playing worse football than Cleary's. We are going backwards.

5. Injuries. Yes we have had a bad season for injuries but we are now going to cull our squad hard. What happens next year when we get injuries?

6. Doyle appears to give a s***. Nobody else seems to.

7. It's not rocket science. You pick the best. Coach, players, trainers, support staff etc. And you set standards. If they don't meet them you replace them with someone who does. The club deserves nothing less and the fans deserve nothing less. If this can't happen then I would like to see another NZ city given the franchise.

Your thoughts welcome.

I have not ready answers Rich, but by heck, you have summed it up so well

 

[jamaman]

Yep Agree Rich.. Our biggest problem is to get a coach that has the CV.

 

[tangalife]

Culture change.

See Tomkin's thoughts on the matter.

 

[tangalife]

Also I want to see some great coaching and mentoring with Maumalo, Fusitua, Kata and even Mariner. These guys have lots of talent and we need to maximise it.

Maumalo is an athletic BEAST. He's just raw as hell. He's gonna take a while to develop so we'll need some patience.

 

[Fufu Andronez]

I can't see things improving under Cappy unfortunately. Which is sad. Who the f**k wants to coach us though, risk vs reward

 

[Fufu Andronez]

Also in regards to coaching I think it was Gould that said a good coach surrounds himself with assistants that could potential take his job. I don't think we can say that we have really ever done this. Most of the successful clubs employ this technique

 

[jaseg]

Some fairly quickly put together and undoubtedly disorganised thoughts...

Loosen the purse strings (no cap on coach/staff/equipment etc), bring the best coach currently on the market to the club (Toovey, if he'll come), don't force ANY staff on him for the first team (the only staff member I'd tell him to keep is Stacey, in some coaching position - whatever the head coach thinks is best... either NRL assistant or staying in NSW cup etc). And don't just look at NRL staff - look at the guys running the development programs for teams like Roosters & Souths and if Toovey wants them, throw money at them to come over and develop OUR juniors for US - instead of watching guys like Taukeiaho spend a year developing in the Roosters system and coming back as a top class player.

Implement structure/culture like the best clubs in world sport - it was brought up elsewhere, but players really should be wearing suits coming into the game (that's a regular thing for top soccer clubs etc - just small things like that can add up over time), fines/demotions for lateness etc. Create an expectation that just getting by doing the minimum isn't good enough - Roy Keane (former Manchester United captain) once described the culture at United (when they were totally dominant - early 90s to mid-naughties) as one where if training was officially at a certain time, it actually started at least 30 minutes earlier, and everyone was there beforehand. Everyone had to buy in, everyone knew that doing the 'bare minimum' was actually going above and beyond. It was just implicitly understood.. anyone who fell short of that for an extended period found themselves on the outer very quickly, regardless of talent.

In terms of injuries, they just happen. You can't really do much about it other than look at preventative work some other clubs might do (Roosters)... but at best that's a lot of investment(time)/effort for minimal returns - injuries happen, and it's mostly just down to luck.

As far as scouts etc.. it's not that bloody hard to pick out talent. If I were in the club's position, I'd be looking very seriously at Scott Bolton - more effective at gaining metres than most of our props, experienced, coming from a successful culture (and makes very few mistakes). Hugely underrated. That's assuming middle forwards are still the recruitment priority. Not much in the halves market... Mitch Cornish is promising and seemingly not much interest in him (no idea why.. guys who can create opportunities like him should be at an absolute premium - could be a genuine creative foil to Johnson). Outside backs? Charly Runciman is apparently being released by the Dragons (because they seemingly wouldn't know a good attacking outside back who is also a very solid defender if he came in for 2 games and provided a higher rate of tries/linebreaks/assists and tackle breaks than any of the others this season). Those 3 kind of stand out, and none of them would be huge investments.

 

[Philip_Smith007]

TKO is a clear example of no matter what the Warriors do (best coach, equipment, suits etc) his outside work environment was way out of their control!

 

[KeepingTheFaith]

As far as scouts etc.. it's not that bloody hard to pick out talent. If I were in the club's position, I'd be looking very seriously at Scott Bolton - more effective at gaining metres than most of our props, experienced, coming from a successful culture (and makes very few mistakes). Hugely underrated. That's assuming middle forwards are still the recruitment priority. Not much in the halves market... Mitch Cornish is promising and seemingly not much interest in him (no idea why.. guys who can create opportunities like him should be at an absolute premium - could be a genuine creative foil to Johnson). Outside backs? Charly Runciman is apparently being released by the Dragons (because they seemingly wouldn't know a good attacking outside back who is also a very solid defender if he came in for 2 games and provided a higher rate of tries/linebreaks/assists and tackle breaks than any of the others this season). Those 3 kind of stand out, and none of them would be huge investments.

Likewise. Is exactly the player we need.

As for where we go next, Cappy pretty much laid it out on Radio Sport today. Didn't really pull his punches either.

Whether it takes us where we need to go is an entirely different question.

 

[MKEB...]

He was pretty blunt in that interview.

 

[Penrose_11]

Sounded like he threw Bluey under the bus a bit with the " They made the GF in 2011, but when Elliott and me arrived in 2013 for pre-season, most of the players were at least 10kgs over weight. I don't know what happened since 2011 but we've had to change make a lot of changes".

And yet they're still f**ked!!

 

[Rich102]

Can you give us the gist of what he said?

 

[Penrose_11]

Full interview is on newstalkzb website or on 'Veitchy on Sport' Facebook page.

 

[Cold Roses]

He was pretty blunt in that interview.

He made all the right noises, that's for sure. Spoke about changing the culture and introducing more professionalism.

The key thing for me though? Our Leadership Group amongst the players continue to get a free pass.

 

[mikeob]

We have major issues at the club and nobody seems to be identifying the problems.

2. We have had our best success with 'Aussie journeymen'. Or local players who spent their early years at Australian clubs. I think we have too many of our own juniors in the squad. For example the Lousi brothers, Havili etc. who haven't received the coaching to bring them to NRL standard. Even Manu still makes glaring errors which are not corrected.

Rich in my opinion the problem starts when the kids are about 13 years old. Most if not all of the Warriors juniors come through the Auckland club competition which has close to 30 clubs and the best players don't play against the best on a regular basis. In Australia the juniors play against the best in their grade for at least several weeks each season and this develops mental toughness which in turn helps their decision making under pressure. Our best juniors don't experience that anywhere near often enough.

Or local players who spent their early years at Australian clubs.
When they get over here they start to toughen up mentally because they are playing against high quality opposition most weeks. Secondly the players around them will already have developed that mental toughness or be developing it.

To fix this the ARL, Warriors and possibly NZRL need to get together and create a new competition for junior grades that can be played for several weeks after the regular competition has concluded. Starting about now have a short competition based on a district scheme. It will take a while but the benefits should start to be seen in a few years.

 

[KeepingTheFaith]

Can you give us the gist of what he said?

From memory

*Professionalism was shit when they arrived in 2013
*Promoting through U20's isn't working
*Bell had his philosophy on recruitment, his is different
*Agrees we need more experienced hardened NRL players as picking from local leagues doesn't work
*11 players from this years top squad will be moving on (we pretty much know most the names already)
*They're still looking at the market for player signings
*Very happy with what Jono Wright has brought to the team and would like another signing with similar attitude/experience
*They've identified fundamental things with the culture that are being addressed and will continue to be addressed
*Konnie didn't get dropped for a single incident in the game, there were a few things that were simply not up to standard and Cappy couldn't ignore. He 100% stands by that decision.
*He's positive he's the man to take us forward, but if he's wrong he has 100% faith in Doyle to get this club heading in the right direction
*Mannering is absolutely the right leader, but he needs more experience and help around him as he can't be standing next to everyone telling them what to do.
*The inexperienced backline was not planned, but was due to injuries/suspension/form more than design.

 

[Matua]

From memory

*Professionalism was shit when they arrived in 2013
*Promoting through U20's isn't working
*Bell had his philosophy on recruitment, his is different
*Agrees we need more experienced hardened NRL players as picking from local leagues doesn't work
*11 players from this years top squad will be moving on (we pretty much know most the names already)
*They're still looking at the market for player signings
*Very happy with what Jono Wright has brought to the team and would like another signing with similar attitude/experience
*They've identified fundamental things with the culture that are being addressed and will continue to be addressed
*Konnie didn't get dropped for a single incident in the game, there were a few things that were simply not up to standard and Cappy couldn't ignore. He 100% stands by that decision.
*He's positive he's the man to take us forward, but if he's wrong he has 100% faith in Doyle to get this club heading in the right direction
*Mannering is absolutely the right leader, but he needs more experience and help around him as he can't be standing next to everyone telling them what to do.
*The inexperienced backline was not planned, but was due to injuries/suspension/form more than design.

Did the woman bashing prick call him on WTF Kata is doing there then? Or are obvious mistakes less important than non obvious ones?

It all seems a bit fishy for me, if it's about off field stuff then say that, if it's about on field then don't pretend just because we're only fans and not the team coaches that we can't see how other players are going.

All the top 3 or 4 lines just appears to be covering his own ass.

If the want to sort out the coach give Dave Rennie a call, he'll tell you how to turn a team around (without f**king everything else up in the process).

Man the Warriors make me angry ... it's probably unhealthy. ;-)

 

[JJ]

Did the woman bashing prick call him on WTF Kata is doing there then? Or are obvious mistakes less important than non obvious ones?

Bazinga!

 

[JohnDoe]

Rich in my opinion the problem starts when the kids are about 13 years old. Most if not all of the Warriors juniors come through the Auckland club competition which has close to 30 clubs and the best players don't play against the best on a regular basis. In Australia the juniors play against the best in their grade for at least several weeks each season and this develops mental toughness which in turn helps their decision making under pressure. Our best juniors don't experience that anywhere near often enough.

Or local players who spent their early years at Australian clubs.
When they get over here they start to toughen up mentally because they are playing against high quality opposition most weeks. Secondly the players around them will already have developed that mental toughness or be developing it.

To fix this the ARL, Warriors and possibly NZRL need to get together and create a new competition for junior grades that can be played for several weeks after the regular competition has concluded. Starting about now have a short competition based on a district scheme. It will take a while but the benefits should start to be seen in a few years.

Jim Doyle made mention of wanting to have a team in SG Ball. I think it would be a huge plus for the club if they could.