No such word as 'unassailable' at the Warriors
Pitiful collapse summed up 2022, but there was better news everywhere else.
On Saturday evening, I nursed the Warriors to an ‘unassailable’ 26-12 lead against the dreadful Gold Coast Titans, then flicked the telly off, put a couple of cold ones in a chiller bag and walked about 300m to a nearby house to watch the All Blacks and tuck into a kadai paneer with a few ladies and gentlemen of the parish.
As I exchanged a couple of pleasantries - one of which might even have been a casual and hopelessly premeditated “I see the Warriors got a win tonight” - while extracting a can from said chiller bag, I glanced up at the TV in time to see the Warriors, leading now by two, give away a penalty in front of the posts with time up.
The only thing I could think to do was laugh.
Of course they had.
It went to golden point and Reece Walsh was incapacitated. Of course he was.
This is the Warriors in 2022.
I’ve seen worse-coached Warriors teams and marginally less talented Warriors teams, but I’m not sure I’ve seen one as comically incapable of doing the right thing at the right time than this version.
Said interim coach Stacey Jones: “We came up with some dumb plays that got them back into the game and it shouldn’t have been like that… We’ve had some tough moments this year and that’s right up there.”
On The Front Page podcast, the Herald’s Warriors beat man Michael Burgess puts the club’s continued failure down to instability, with an extraordinary turnover of coaches and players allied to fickle decision-making at executive and ownership level contributing to an environment that makes consistent success impossible.
“There’s been massive instability in the playing roster. There have been so many players coming and going. There’s been instability in the coaching. We’ve had four coaches in three seasons. And we’ve had instability in the way the head office makes decisions,” Burgess noted.
Pretty hard to argue with any of that, but I’d also highlight poor recruitment and the inability to establish a distinct identity or culture - which should be a massive advantage in a one-country, one-team environment - as big factors. The belief that a below average “hard-nosed Australian” is a better option than looking local is a policy that dooms you to being a below average club.
It would be naive to suggest the Warriors would ever be able to get a stranglehold on the best New Zealand talent, but they should be doing a hell of a lot better at identifying it than they are. The crew at El Niche Cache do a good job of reminding readers just how much New Zealand talent is floating around the NRL at clubs more capable of offering finals footy.
Anyway, the past month of the NRL season has felt like a giant waste of time. Here’s to some decent footy on our screens again.
Finals lineup (Home team first)
Qualifying finals: (1) Penrith v (4) Parramatta; (2) Cronulla v (3) North Queensland
Elimination finals: (5) Melbourne v (8) Canberra; (6) Easts v (7) Souths
FOOTY CHAT
It can get lost a little in the obsession with the fortunes of one particular team, but if you’re trying to rebuild interest in the Rugby Championship after a few sketchy years, you can’t really ask for more than this scenario with two games remaining. Just a shame there’s another down week in the schedule.
The tournament is this close because nobody can find any consistency. The Boks looked dead and buried after dreadful performances against the All Blacks at Ellis Park and the Wallabies at Adelaide, but they were World Cup-winning ruthless in Sydney on Saturday night.
That maniacal look from Eben Etzebeth, too.
Meanwhile, Forwards coach Jason Ryan acknowledges that the All Blacks have to back up a great performance with another one if they want to convince they’re on the right track.
“We need to build those habits. We’ve done a lot of work this week and last week in making some shifts in areas, but now we’ve got to back that up with another performance against Australia.”
Other rugby items of note.
1. The final of the Farah Palmer Palmer Cup will see a classic Canterbury v Auckland clash. The Aucklanders 26-21 win over Waikato was a little more comfortable than the final 26-21 score suggests, while Canterbury easily accounted for Wellington 31-3.
The final will be Kendra Cocksedge’s final game for Canterbury, after announcing her decision to retire from rugby at the conclusion of this year’s World Cup.
2. Northland beat Auckland. The 23-22 at Semenoff Stadium - it’ll always be Okara Park to me - was the latest in a line of results that suggest there’s something good happening up the top.
Not surprisingly, the Northern Advocate are pretty excited by developments, liberally throwing around terms like “coaching masterclass” and “frighteningly good”, while assessing this as a team that is as “capable of attacking and scoring from anywhere, as they are defending every blade of grass”.
So they’re pretty bloody good then!
As I was reading the piece I was reminded how much parochial sports reporting adds to the canon and how no competition has suffered as much from the abandonment of sports desks on mastheads around the country than the NPC.
I even loved this quote from captain Matt Moulds, though I needed to read it about 11 times and then back to front before it started to make sense.
“Ever since we changed our name from North Auckland to Northland, we've always been the little brother, and we wanted to level that playing field and become a brother of our own.”
3. We think of England and France as the two financial giants of the rugby world, but the plight of Worcester has cast a pall over the start of the Premiership. The Guardian has reported that “almost half of the 13 Premiership clubs are either heavily in debt or have an owner who is potentially in danger of losing faith”.
Worcester director of rugby Steve Diamond said rugby clubs must learn to cut their cloth. “The days have gone, in my opinion, where you can have a director of rugby and a head coach. You’ve got two people doing one job, so you’ve got to amalgamate it. Do you need forwards coaches, defence coaches and lots of other coaches? Do you need three people in the media department? We have got to look at that, as well as how many players you need. We need a solution because none of the clubs are making money. Worcester are just first in the line of being exposed to the frailties of professional sport after the pandemic.”
Grim.
GREAT SCOTTS
All eyes on Laguna Seca next weekend as the IndyCar season comes down to the wire. Scott McLaughlin raced perfectly in Portland to win, giving him an outside chance for a series victory. Scott Dixon somehow managed to get from 16th to third and give himself a chance.
Australian Will Power, who finished second, holds most of the cars though, with a 20-point lead over Dixon and Josef Newgarden. Any podium finish would see him win his second championship. McLaughlin lies fifth overall, 41 points behind Power.
It’s a big motorsport weekend, with the Supercars at Pukekohe for the final time.
SUZIE’S CUE
I’ll be straight up with you - T20 is short enough for me and The Hundred leaves me cold. But Suzie Bates! The White Ferns veteran was the last international wild card picked up and it turned out to be an inspired move by the South London side. She was the tournament’s second-highest run-getter, batting at an impressive 147 strike rate and while she didn’t have a notable final, she captained the side to victory.
SERENA’S SWANSONG
Serena Williams changed tennis with her mix of refined power and extraordinary athleticism. She might not have got the most grand slams, but most recognise her as the Greatest of All Time. She also provided a moving spectacle at 1-5 down in the third set of her doomed throes-round match against Alja Tomljanovic, staving off several match points as she tried to eke out a few more minutes on court.
But you know, there’s always someone glad to see you go. Step forward Phil Mushnick from the New York Post.
... the discerning public has grown sick of the Williams family’s act, tired of advertisers and media shoving Serena down our better senses as someone we all love and admire.
This week, ESPN’s lead Open voices, Chris Fowler, John McEnroe and Chris Evert, swapped obsequious, all-glory-to-Serena sonnets — artificially sweetened fairy tales. Having witnessed much of Williams’ excessive misconduct, there is nothing better to conclude than that their commentary was transparently and intentionally dishonest.
Tiger Woods Pandering Media Syndrome. Don’t believe what you see and know, believe what you’re told to believe. Some truths are none of your business.
I might be alone, but I found it a little curious that the two sporting figures whose bad behaviour Mushnick chose to highlight, and I mean there are hundreds to choose from, were those belonging to Williams and Woods.
KEEPING ENEMIES CLOSER
The Merseyside Derby was actually worth staying up for, even if it ended as a goalless draw. The ball kept hitting the bar like it was on a night out with George Best, there was a goal chalked off and keepers Alisson Becker and Jordan Pickford had matches to celebrate. On Friday I used an image to demonstrate just how close Goodison Park is to Anfield but mentioned there was a British derby that was closer than the 966m between them.
Quick as a flash, answers started appearing. Fulham’s Craven Cottage to Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge was mentioned, but as the crow flies that is almost exactly 2kms according to howfaragogo.com.
Closer together than the Mersey giants lie Nottingham Forest and Notts County, with just 270m separating the City Ground and Meadow Lane. Unfortunately County, the oldest professional football club in the world, is no longer in the football league, so I discounted this.
Leyton Orient’s Brisbane Rd is just a couple of kilometres from West Ham’s London Stadium, but given they’re at opposite ends of the football league spectrum, to call it a derby is stretching the term.
There is a clear winner, however, north of the border, where Dundee (Dens Park) and Dundee United (Tannadice Park) play just 183m from each other. United are currently last in the Scottish Premiership and Dundee are third in the Championship, so there is a chance they will replace each other in their respective leagues next season.
Tragic Warriors Fan Tip #37. Never, ever, believe there is a "can't lose from here" moment in any game.
Trivia note on UK football grounds ... despite Nottingham Forest's stadium being called the City Ground, it's actually located outside the city boundary, in the county of Nottinghamshire. And Notts County's ground is on the other side of the river, which means it'st within the city!