Just posting up the article from
East Stand's link, cheers mate.
Anything related to the season or review can go in here, anything related to Cameron George specifically can go in the discussion currently taking place in his thread. The admins don't like having to move comments so try keep it on topic, thanks fam.
Warriors season in review: Cameron George David Long05:00, Sep 16 2018
ANDREW CORNAGA/ PHOTOSPORT
Warriors CEO Cameron George wants the end of season review to be thorough.
The 2018 Warriors season will go down as one where the club bounced back from seven years in the wilderness to finish in the top eight.
But it will also be remembered as one where the club fell at the first hurdle in the finals, getting outplayed by the Panthers.
CEO Cameron George agreed to lift the lid on what really happened inside the Warriors this year, revealing information that up until now had been kept behind closed doors.
This internal mission statement showed that the Warriors went out to win the Premiership this season.
George broke down the season to six key events that impacted their campaign and then looked ahead to how they intend to be better next year, on and off the field.
PRE SEASON GOAL
The Warriors produced a graphic which was given to all the key people before the season began with targets on what they wanted to achieve. These included getting respect from the media, bringing back the fans to Mt Smart Stadium and most importantly of all, winning this year's Premiership. George: We never set out to make the top eight, we never set out to make the top four, we set out to win the thing, that was our internal position we took.
In my first presentation about what we were going to achieve this year and what it would take, the key was anything was possible.
My whole line throughout the year was that every time we play we're there to win and when that expectation filtered through the club, it meant that if we were doing that more often than not, we're going to give ourselves a good chance to achieve that objective.
But every week was a new week and every game a new game, so it required the commercial staff to promote it, to fill the stadium, to get more members here, then the team had to prepare themselves well and we had to give them the right environment to play well.
So it all gelled together each week to win that game, it was across the organisation, it wasn't just football, it took everyone to win.
That was a real shift in mindset from us and them, the commercial side and the footy side.
We can't be sitting on our hands hoping the football drags people here. We're in the entertainment business and we need to be really out there with our thinking and not be scared to try anything.
RE-SIGNING
ROGER TUIVASA-SHECK The big story going into the season was whether the Warriors captain would recommit his future to the club. There were stories that he was interested in going to rugby to attempt to make it into the All Blacks and a report that he'd agreed to join the Blues. But at the Warriors' season launch, it was announced that he had re-signed with the club until the end of the 2022 season. George: That was make or break for us. I really believe that if Roger had decided to play rugby union, as it was reported, then it would have deflated the already low confidence from the seasons before. That going into 2018, one of the best young leaders in sport had decided to walk away from us.
So we were blessed and lucky that Roger made the decision to stay with us long term and lead us into the future.
That was hugely important to us as a club, the playing group and our fans.
WINNING THE FIRST FIVE GAMES
It had become a common theme for the Warriors to start seasons badly, do well during the Origin period then fade at the end. But this year, they started with a bang. George says this helped by a new way of thinking at the club. George: The key factor for me was that we ripped off the corporate approach and became a footy club.
For anyone who's experienced successful footy clubs, it comes down to a few key aspects. That's strong leadership, getting professionalism to the right roles with people who know more about football than administrators like myself.
The key is finding the experts to come in and enforce a really good footy department and for that we've got Brian Smith.
Then with Alex Corvo's introduction there was a really good approach by the coaching staff to make hard work the ethos of improvement.
People criticise me for not having a psychologist or not having a person in that particular role, but my belief was that the manner and methods in which Stephen, Alex and the coaching staff can implement through hard training, hard expectation and strong accountability, will always take us further at this stage of our club's career, than where any sports psychologist could in the short term.
SALE OF THE CLUB
The saga over Eric Watson selling the Warriors had dragged on from midway through the previous season, but came down to a very public battle between Hawaiian businessman Richard Fale and Auckland Rugby League CEO Cameron McGregor, on behalf of the Carlaw Heritage Trust. Fale and McGregor took shots at each other through the media, accountants were at the club going through the books and staff worried about whether they were going to keep their jobs. George: It was really difficult. It was like trying to wrestle smoke, you could never get control of it.
You had prospective owners playing out their negotiations and tactics in the papers.
We had one particular person walking around with TV cameras on game day, like he was Donald Trump. That was just uncalled for and it added so much pressure.
Despite the efforts of our previous owners of trying to keep it away, it was beyond a joke.
To have people saying on TV or in the paper that they're going to do this or that to us, it put a scare through the organisation.
We've got a lot of young staff here, who didn't know if they were coming or going with this owner or that owner.
We had prospective owners talking to staff directly about their views, their vision and how they're going to cut things back, put fridge magnets in households and install washing machines here.
The players did such an exceptional job to maintain a level of success through that period, but I'm more proud of the staff behind the scenes that maintained a high work ethic through a difficult period.
DENVER TEST
The Warriors, like other NRL clubs, didn't want their players going to America for a mid-season test played at altitude against England and the whole thing turned out to be a disaster. While there were 19,000 spectators at the game, it's believed 12,000 of those were given free tickets and the NZRL ended up not getting paid. The players were stuck in America because of an electrical storm and didn't get back to New Zealand until Wednesday, two days before their game against the Sharks. George: It was a difficult debate to have, because I know the importance the players put on representing their country.
I had to respect that, but I also had to ensure I was protecting the wider club and the fans around what was best for us.
It was a ridiculous decision, we have so many opportunities to improve our game in our backyard.
I don't feel that playing in the States was in any way good for our game, or was going to grow the international pie.
Sadly for the NZRL, the promoter has gone walkabout and left them short financially.
So it hasn't worked out well for anyone, it was a topic of conversation that we could have avoided if common sense had prevailed in the first instance.
We should get our backyard right first, before we go off and help the Americans understand what rugby league is about.
Also, I genuinely believe the Denver test took it out of the players that travelled.
We travelled from Townsville, the furthest point in a normal season for a home game, three days before they flew out.
Then when they came back, it wasn't necessarily in the first game against Cronulla, where we got beaten, it was the second game, against Penrith that showed the lethargicness.
PANTHERS LOSS IN THE ELIMINATION FINAL
The Warriors finished the season eighth, so had to play the Panthers in Sydney. They lost 27-12. George: I was absolutely shattered. To come so far against all predictions and all that outside noise, we proved a hell of a lot of people wrong, but there was still a heap more that I wanted to prove wrong.
Our expectations internally were to finish much higher than we did and I truly believe we had the squad and the staff around them to win the Premiership.
But if you're not 100 per cent on every game, it hammers you.
I was shattered for the players, our staff and also that we didn't achieve more for our fans, we all know that was a missed opportunity.
This year we went closer to winning it than we have in the last seven years.
I'm never going to say we're rebuilding this club, in my view we've got the team to win it.
REVIEW
With the season over, the club goes into review mode, last year this sparked some significant changes in the way the Warriors operate and Cameron George wants this year's one to be just as detailed and probing. George: The review period we'll have over the next couple of weeks will highlight any issues we have and we'll put the right mechanisms in place to fix them.
Winning can put paper over cracks, so I need to make sure we don't have that happening and I need to make sure the review really gets into the detail of all things operational, all things coaching and all things performance wise in the playing group.
When you get into that much detail, the devils will be there and I need to make sure that when they're highlighted, we fix it.
MEMBERSHIP
Next season the Warriors have ambitious plans, they want to have every seat sold for every game by Christmas and have reduced the cost of membership to $199. George: We want to be the most entertaining and engaging sporting brand in New Zealand.
We want to sell out this stadium and be like the Green Bay Packers.
We have 25,500 seats here and our ambition is to sell every seat before we get to Christmas. Through our membership pricing and structure, that's achievable.
So we want our fans to fill the stadium up, own their seat for the year and come and have some fun.
Around that, we're going to put on some cool events and how fantastic would it be if we were the first NRL club ever to have sold out their stadium before the season has kicked off?
That's something that no team in New Zealand has done. Most clubs are charging more for memberships, we've gone the other way because we want to sell every seat.
Sunday News
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/league/107082200/warriors-season-in-review-cameron-george
