In order to move forward this season, first the Warriors had to take a few steps back. Back to 1995. Back to where it all began.
For a team that had been searching for its identity, perhaps the answers were already there all along. They just needed someone to pick up the pieces and put it all back together again.
Now the Warriors, fresh off a 2022 season which saw them win just six games and finish 15th, have emerged as a premiership dark horse and genuine top-four threat.
It is a stunning turnaround that all happened in a matter of months, and one that finds its roots on one December day back home at Mt Smart Stadium. Home.
A word that took on new meaning in the team’s first pre-season back in New Zealand, where rookie coach Andrew Webster put an emphasis on reconnecting with the club’s past.
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That included inviting former Warriors halfback Greg Alexander, who had not stepped foot on Mt Smart Stadium in 26 years, to talk to the playing group. And he wasn’t the only one.
“I was over there in December and Webby rang me when I arrived,” Alexander told foxsports.com.au this week.
“I didn’t know he knew I was coming. I was over there for a completely different thing and he rang me and said, ‘Do you want to come to training?’. I jumped at the chance, went to training and met all the new boys.
“I think what’s helped the Warriors [is] a new coach, new attitude, knows what’s important in a team to get them to win games, a host of new players coming all at the same time. They may not be marquee players but they’re very good first graders to go with the players they had there already.
“But the day I spent at Mt Smart Stadium with the team and coaching staff, they wound it right back and I witnessed the chat amongst the team. They even had on the big screen out on the oval, former players like Dean Bell delivering messages about what it is to be a Warrior.
“I think Webby made that important to say, ‘Well, what is our identity? What do we stand for?’. I was only there one day so obviously those kind of team building and culture building exercises happened all off season and it paid off. All of a sudden they have got an identity.”
On the surface, Webster hardly looked like the ideal candidate to do that — at least right away.
But sometimes you’ve got to dig deeper than the surface, like Webster did when he first arrived at the Warriors at the start of pre-season with a vision to turn around the league’s perennial underachievers.
HOW WEBSTER AVOIDED THE ‘BIGGEST MISTAKE’ NEW COACHES MAKE
Although, it’s probably not quite accurate to say it was the first time Webster made the drive down Beasley Avenue. It is part of the reason why he was such a smart hire from the start.
While Webster entered this season without any head coaching experience in the NRL, he did have two years working as an assistant under Andrew McFadden at the Warriors.
Of course, he also later joined now back-to-back defending premiers Penrith Panthers where he again worked as an assistant coach alongside Ivan Cleary, the same man who last took the Warriors to a grand final.
All of this is to say that for someone in their first full season as an NRL head coach, Webster already had the right kind of experience the Warriors needed.
He had been there before, seen what worked and what didn’t, and knew there was one temptation he had to avoid — even if coming from a premiership powerhouse like Penrith.
“The biggest mistake coaches make is they copy and paste things from where they’ve been,” Webster told The Daily Telegraph late last year.
Instead, the Warriors’ rookie coach went about finding a new identity that was uniquely theirs and one they could be proud of too.
For too long, they had been the NRL’s entertainers — with highlight-reel tries and all the flashy stuff that brings the crowd to its feet but never keeps them standing too long.
It wasn’t sustainable and as a result success wasn’t sustainable for a team that has only qualified for the finals once in the past decade.
You know what is sustainable? Defending well, something the Warriors of old were never much good at. Now though, they are conceding 18.1 points per game — the third-fewest in the NRL.
WARRIORS’ ROCK-SOLID DEFENCE
Points Conceded — 18.1 (3rd)
Tries Conceded — 3.1 (3rd)
Run Metres Conceded — 1,379 (4th)
Linebreaks Conceded — 4.1 (4th)
Missed Tackles — 28.3 (5th)
Offloads Conceded — 7.8 (3rd)
“They’ve just been a revelation,” Alexander said.
“It’s amazing the football they’ve been playing. Such a good story — sell-out crowds, just exactly what they needed.
“But the identity only comes because of all the hard work they’ve put in. There’s a whole lot that has gone into making them the team they are this year.
“Their attention to detail in both attack and defence is as good as any team in the competition. It’s the lines they run in attack, the grit they show in defence and obviously that is attitude mixed in with some technical defensive patterns, but it’s just amazing this transformation has happened overnight. It is overnight.
“I remember talking about them in the pre-season challenge and I said, ‘Wow, these blokes look like they know what they’re doing with the ball’ and it was impressive — these were trial matches. It was like, ‘They actually know what they’re doing. This is a good side’. You kept thinking, ‘Are they going to stumble throughout the season?’.
“I’ve been waiting for it to happen… only because it was so many years of disappointment with the Warriors. There’s part of me that thinks, ‘Is this going to finish?’. But what they’ve built their game on is rock-solid. It doesn’t just disappear overnight. It doesn’t just fall apart.”
The offloads and helter-skelter attack that had come to define the Warriors in past years, on the other hand, was impossible to replicate consistently from game to game.
It is not that the Warriors are no longer the NRL’s chief entertainers. They are just finding different ways to entertain.
Perhaps no single player better speaks to the team’s evolution as a whole than halfback Shaun Johnson, who Alexander believes is in career-best form at 32 years old.
“The foundation is strong and Andrew Webster has done a great job to mould six or seven new players in the side… but the key to it all is Shaun Johnson,” Alexander said.
“Shaun Johnson just might be, and I’m not sure where he was standing in terms of the Dally Ms, I’ve got him up there with the best players of the season — not just the most improved.”
To answer that question, Johnson was on 22 points when voting went behind closed doors at the end of Round 12.
Payne Haas (30) was eight points ahead but working in Johnson’s favour is the fact the Broncos front rower has missed time through Origin duties and injury.
The same goes for Nathan Cleary (25), Harry Grant (25), Reece Walsh (24), Latrell Mitchell (23), Cody Walker (22) and Ben Hunt (22).
While the Warriors suffered disappointing 26-22 and 28-6 losses to Brisbane and South Sydney respectively, they have otherwise won their five other games since that period.
They won all five in convincing fashion too, with Johnson setting up nine tries in wins over the Sharks, Dragons and Raiders.
Already, Johnson has 21 try assists and 19 linebreak assists from just 18 games — an increase of seven and nine respectively on the figures he recorded in three more games last year.
HOW JOHNSON RANKS AGAINST NRL HALFBACKS IN 2023
Try assists — 1.2 (2nd)
Total try involvements — 2.5 (2nd)
Linebreak assists — 1.1 (4th)
Kick metres — 532 (1st)
Forced dropouts — 0.9 (1st)
But it’s not the try assists or linebreak assists that are the most impressive part of Johnson’s resurgence.
It is the way he is setting up those tries and linebreaks. The way he is methodically breaking down opposition defences with a pinpoint kicking game, building pressure and playing the long game like any good experienced halfback would.
Johnson, like the entire Warriors team, has evolved his game and currently averages the most kick metres (532) and forced dropouts (0.9) of all halfbacks in the NRL.
Although given how Luke Metcalf and Te Maire Martin were playing in the pre-season, along with the way Johnson ended his career at Cronulla, his trip back across the ditch was hardly guaranteed to be a successful homecoming. Now he has re-signed for the 2024 season.
“Going back to that pre-season challenge, he wasn’t in the team,” said Alexander.
“It was Te Maire Martin and Luke Metcalf in the halves and I’m thinking, ‘Wow, Shaun Johnson might not get a start’. He might get blocked out of the team because Martin and Metcalf were very good.
“But Johnson is a better player than he ever has been, ever. The reason is he cares about the result, not just his own performance. That’s the reason. He’s done it week in, week out.
“There hasn’t been a lapse in effort from Shaun Johnson. So, if you’ve got a talent who’s still got enough speed, certainly has got the intelligence and the football knowledge and got all the skills to go with it.
“When you get someone who cares about the result with that ability, it’s pretty good.”
THE OTHER KEY COGS AND SHREWD MOVES BEHIND WARRIORS’ RESURGENCE
The rest of the spine is firing too, with new recruits Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad and Luke Metcalf both seamlessly fitting into their respective roles at fullback and five-eighth.
Metcalf in particular has been a revelation recently while filling in for the injured Te Maire Martin, to the extent that it is hard to see the incumbent getting his spot back right away.
Then there is Wayde Egan, who had his path to first grade blocked by the arrival of Apisai Koroisau, prompting the Penrith hooker to leave everything he knew behind and make the trip across the ditch.
It is a decision that is really starting to pay off this year, resulting in Egan extending until the end of 2025 earlier this month.
“He’s 26 so it’s taken him a little time but he’s got to be included in the best hookers in the game at the moment, certainly this year,” Alexander said.
“This year he’s got to be. When talking about the precision they play with and the detail in their attack, it starts with Wayde Egan. He squares the defence up as good as anyone in the competition.
“He’s running the ball, his defence is strong. He’s had an amazing season and certainly is in the conversation for the best hooker of the season so far.”
The numbers certainly put Egan in that conversation, with the Warriors hooker averaging the second-most total try involvements and fourth-most linebreak assists at the position.
For a team with a dominant playmaker like Johnson though, crisp service from dummy-half is more important than anything else and that is exactly what Egan is providing.
That slick service is also helping the Warriors get their power game going up front and giving their ball-playing forwards the space and momentum to test opposition defences.
Not only do you have to contend with the ball-playing of Johnson or speed off the mark from Metcalf, but there is also the added threat of the short passing game from Tohu Harris and Addin Fonua-Blake in particular.
You only have to ask the best defensive team in the league, who were cut open by a short ball from Harris to Fonua-Blake earlier this year.
The pair have 19 total try involvements, 10 linebreak assists and seven try assists between them this year.
For all the talk about Isaah Yeo and Cameron Murray’s ball-playing abilities, Harris tops all lock forwards in linebreak assists (seven) and try assists (4).
He doesn’t touch the ball quite as much, with 226 general play passes compared to 259 for Murray and 350 for Yeo but the touches are quality.
“It’s all incorporated in why they’re such a good team this year,” Alexander said.
“That variation, that variety through the middle of ruck with Tohu Harris and Addin Fonua-Blake and Mitch Barnett and Jazz Tevaga when they’ve been there are just another reason. “There are a whole host of reasons why they’re such a great team to watch and hard team to beat. That’s just one of their strengths with their ball-playing middles.”
Again, central to the Warriors’ identity this year is getting through the hard work first and flashy stuff later.
Harris and Fonua-Blake are proof of this, averaging 101 and 148 run metres respectively along with 35 and 23 tackles. They lay the foundations first, then the ball-playing comes off the back of it.
It is not just those two either. Dylan Walker has been one of the league’s most underrated players this year, revitalising his career while offering the Warriors another ball-playing option through the middle.
Walker too is just one example of a number of shrewd signings the Warriors made over the summer, also bringing over Marata Niukore, Mitchell Barnett and Jackson Ford.
Ford in particular has thrived with a consistent role on the edge, having struggled for playing time while at the Dragons.
“All of those signings — Niukore, Mitch Barnett even though they’ve spent time off the field,” Alexander said.
“Walker has been great for them and he’s another to throw into the mix with the ball-playing middles. They’re all doing a job. They’ve all been good. It’s very astute buying from the Warriors.”
WHY A FINALS RUN WON’T DEFINE SUCCESS FOR WARRIORS IN 2023
Heading into 2023, all Warriors fans would have been hoping for was some sign that Webster had the club tracking in the right direction.
Finals weren’t a must. They definitely weren’t the expectation, at least externally. But after winning just six games in 2022, there needed to be at least some improvement.
However, even the most optimistic of Warriors fans couldn’t have seen this coming. Now the team is not only a strong chance of making the top four but could even potentially push for its first minor premiership since 2002.
The Warriors close out the season with a bye and six games that they would be considered comfortable favourites for if they were played right now.
WARRIORS’ RUNE HOME
Round 21: Home vs Raiders
Round 22: BYE
Round 23: Away vs Titans
Round 24: Away vs Tigers
Round 25: Home vs Sea Eagles
Round 26: Home vs Dragons
Round 27: Away vs Dolphins
Should the Warriors win all six they would finish on 40 points and be every chance of finishing ahead of Penrith and Brisbane, who have a few tough games to close out the season.
Now, there is an argument to be made that a soft run home could leave the Warriors underprepared for the finals, especially when you consider they are yet to prove themselves against the genuine competition heavyweights this year.
But how many genuine contenders are there really this season? And they got pretty close against Penrith, even if the 18-6 scoreline didn’t necessarily reflect it.
Anyway, success for the Warriors this year won’t be dictated by how deep they go in the finals. Rather, it will be determined by how the team builds on this year’s success in 2024 and beyond.
With Roger Tuivasa-Sheck set to return to the club next season, there is reason to be seriously upbeat about the direction Webster has the Warriors heading in.
The only problem being that we’ve heard it all before.
It just means that Webster has a chance to make his own mark and, maybe one day, he will be on the receiving end of that phone call he gave Alexander this pre-season.
“It’s crucial,” Alexander said of the Warriors being successful in the NRL.
“League is in a battle over there with rugby union and union is stronger but a strong Warriors side will continue to see young New Zealanders want to play for the Warriors and want to play rugby league so it’s crucial in terms of not just the Warriors’ development but that right across the NRL.”
For now, all the Warriors can focus on is qualifying for their first finals series since 2018. Oh, and sending Dallin Watene-Zelezniak and his flowing locks flying over for more spectacular tries.
Originally published as ‘Overnight revelation’: Secret behind Warriors coach’s transformation