OPINION: The Warriors can win the NRL Premiership in 2017.
Yip, you read that right.
If you're laughing, keep reading.
Every year at this point I, like you, habitually lower my expectations around what the Warriors will achieve in the upcoming season. They are consistently inconsistent. Always overhyped, they almost always under-deliver.
That familiar cry of "this is our year" from Warriors fans has always been built on nothing but hope. An unrealistic hope that Shaun Johnson will regularly perform a solo routine of miracles, and that he'll consistently draw the best out of the conveyor belt of rising stars around him who will deliver on their promise.
The key for the Warriors this year is removing the hope, and replacing it with expectation. And that means changing the mentality of not just the fans, but the team as well.
All Whites coach Anthony Hudson’s doing this right now with his team. He’s going to join Jim Kayes and me on RadioLIVE Sunday Sport from 2pm today to talk about why he’s shedding the perennial underdog tag for his side. It’s a tag that’s served the All Whites well in the past, but now it’s holding them back. A surprise result is seen as a bonus rather than an expectation, and he wants that to change. He’s going public with this change in mindset, so that fans and the media can hold them accountable to the same set of standards they hold internally, and eliminate what he describes as a “mediocre feedback loop”. It’s a smart move.
The Warriors are moving in the right direction here, and changing the mentality of the club starts at the top. Owner Eric Watson’s clicked that he needs to take personal care for the oversight of a high performance sports team, building an off-field unit that supports high performance on it. Experts in other codes like Eric Mangini, Sir Graham Henry and Owen Eastwood, and former players like Awen Guttenbiel who know about the issues with the club culture, and what's required to fix them.
Until now, the Warriors have seemingly been on an endless search to find the right coach. How about four? The 2017 Super-coaching quartet of Stephen Kearney, Stacey Jones, Andrew McFadden and Steve McNamara have all the bases covered. They have positional expertise, mana, respect, international experience and NRL smarts. These guys know what they're doing.
And we should expect these guys to get the best out of what is a truly impressive roster - the most impressive Warriors side we've seen in years. Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, Shaun Johnson, Issac Luke, Simon Mannering, Kieren Foran. Well, soon.
Fitness is always the joker, but barring injury to key players there is absolutely no reason why this team should not succeed. There are people out there calling for fans to lower their expectations. Why?
We should expect success in 2017. The fans should expect success, and the media should demand it from a club that finally has its act together.
Will the Warriors win the NRL this year? Who knows? But if you don’t start the year talking about winning it, then you probably won’t.
For once I want to see and hear this team talk about winning the competition. If they start thinking they can, then maybe they will.
And then we’ll all be laughing.
Andrew Gourdie is a Newshub sports reporter/presenter and co-host of Sunday Sport on RadioLIVE.
