In praise of the Warriors – as they face a potential third campaign away from home

The end of the road isn’t necessarily in sight for the New Zealand Warriors.

Warriors players look on following a Raiders try during the Round 24 NRL match against Canberra at BB Print Stadium, Mackay, QLD, Friday, August 27.
Photo: Photosport Ltd 2021

Two seasons into their Australian-based NRL odyssey, the Warriors face the prospect of a third campaign away from home.

Just let that sink in for a minute.

The Warriors were never a serious threat to qualify for the NRL’s top-eight playoffs this season. I predicted, on RNZ’s old Extra Time podcast, that the team would finish between ninth and thirteenth in 2021.

With a game to play they are eleventh, which is still a pretty meritorious outcome.

This weekend will always have been marked on the calendar as ‘the end’. The time when the travelling roadshow would disband and players and their families would finally go home.

For others, who’ve joined the squad in the previous two seasons, this would mark the time to travel to Auckland for the first time. To buy or rent property, find schools for their children and settle their partners into life in New Zealand.

Only that looks unlikely now.

The latest Covid-19 outbreak has complicated everything again and the players face the very real possibility of remaining based out of Queensland for the foreseeable future.

Last summer, half the team trained in New Zealand, with the rest in Australia. This time around head coach Nathan Brown has said his preference is for the players to conduct their pre-season as one unit.

At this stage they’ll have to do that in Redcliffe, just out of Brisbane.

We’ve heard about Olympians who’ve returned from Tokyo and gone from managed isolation and into a lockdown. And we’ve definitely heard about the All Blacks and the challenges they’ll face by being on the road for the next four months.

Those Olympic athletes are home, though, and the All Blacks will be back too. But the Warriors? Maybe not.

I mentioned the meritorious nature of the Warriors’ season and meant it sincerely.

Athletes are, by virtue of their circumstances, resilient. They have to rise above injuries and losses and poor performances. Much as they hurt, there’s always next week and players have to park their disappointment and go again.

They also have each other. Even among rival teams, there is a collegiality that’s not often seen in normal life. You only have to look at all the clubs who came to participate in, or watch, the mass haka in honour of departing Warriors captain Roger Tuivasa-Sheck a month or so ago.

Roger Tuivasa-Sheck.
Photo: Photosport Ltd 2021

Within your specific team environment, you have friends and coaches and welfare staff and trainers who have your best interests at heart. Everything is done to ensure your wellbeing.

But think of the families here. The players might be in Queensland, but some have partners and children still in New South Wales. For others, their loved ones are way back here in New Zealand.

For all that teams support athletes, a player cannot succeed with a chaotic home life. With partners and children who are unhappy or unsettled or simply unused to forever living out of a suitcase.

Which of us wouldn’t want to stay in a Queensland resort, with pools, restaurants, golf courses and all the other trimmings. How good would a week in one of those be?

But how about months in a small room or apartment with three children and no respite?

It is remarkable that the Warriors players keep turning up week after week and keep putting in maximum effort, despite often being of inferior talent to their opponents. Lesser men and lesser clubs would have imploded by now. There would have been training pitch brawls and mutinies and players going rogue.

We’ve come to take the Warriors’ sacrifice for granted. To assume because no-one’s whinging and no player is playing up on the booze, that everything must be sweet.

That every player and coach and support staff member has a blissful home life and that they’re all living the rugby league dream.

People like to cite the fact that this is a player’s job, that he’s paid handsomely and should be happy whatever the circumstances. That other people are sent to war zones, dig drains for a living or have no income at all, thanks to Covid-19.

All of those things are true, but they don’t diminish the way in which the Warriors have accepted and adapted to their situation.

I’m glad that the All Blacks finally got on a plane and went to Perth and I’m appreciative that the England netball team are about to play the Silver Ferns. Just as I’m relieved that our Olympic athletes emerged unscathed from their time in Tokyo.

But I would be disappointed if people forgot about these New Zealand Warriors and what they’ve been through, just as I’m sorry for the team and, particularly their families, to read that the end might not be in sight.

Success isn’t always about winning titles. In the Warriors’ case, it’s not even about making the playoffs.

But in surviving these last two seasons abroad – and in talking positively about the prospect of a third – they’ve shown themselves to be a unique and admirable group.

That’s ample evidence of a winning culture in my book.