Are we about to witness one of the great one-two hooker combos in Warriors history...
Exciting times alright
Exciting times alright
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Healey spotted at Auckland airport travelling with the FG team.
Rumours of a Healey debut
My wife surprised me & purchased tix to the games(Whole weekend) flights(Perth to Brissy) for magic round. Her folks live 15 mins from Suncorp. So our accom is sorted. I've never been to suncorp. And its been a dream of mine to watch a game there. Bit of bucket list trip for me. Feel like a kid again , Excited! Lol. Hope the boys get the W! I'll be smiling for the rest of the year.
Lot of Wahs shirts in Brisbane today.
We are dominating the league in meterage WITHOUT i) our marquee forward JFH and ii) our first choice wingers: RTS and DWZ. RTS and DWZ are both almost 200+ meters a game on a good day. JFH is good for 120-150m per game. Just imagine what our go forward is going to look like with all our triple bangers back in. Any halves pairing in the comp would kill for a forward pack that performs like ours. Halves clicking is what is blocking us from being a genuine top 4 team imo because we already have a top 4 performing pack.Nice stats shows that our halves are combining even with clunkiness and a lack of polish.
Once they get some more experience we're going to be a bit of a force
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This stat is what gives me confidence that we will win this game. Cows deadly attack is meaningless if they don't ever get out of their red zone. It's how we blunted even deadlier attacking teams like Manly and Brisbane.
On way to Brisbane and the plane is full of Warrior supporters - Air NZ crew just called it the warriors express!
Air NZ also have the movie Sharko available too … awesome as Mark Graham was a favourite player of mine
Air NZ also have the movie Sharko available too … awesome as Mark Graham was a favourite player of mine
He will join the class of great Aussie forward imports who came looking for a new challenge and left as a club legend: Campion, Price, Luck. Testament to Webby's coaching that players coming and leaving under his tenure leave as better players. No longer are the days that coming to the wahs would kill your career. Now it can be the making of it.
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Have been a member since the old old site. If I was going to post crap for giggles i wouldnt have waited over a decade
Have been upfront that I don’t know the strength of my source only that they do have access to players and management and spent social time in the dressing room on Friday night.With each passing day looks like it was more smoke than fire but am hoping we may yet be pleasantly surprised.
I actually rate Dutchie as a footy analyst - he knows his stuff, he just skews in a different direction sometimes.
What I can’t stomach is suggesting Will does ‘fake news’ or is deliberately biased. Will has spent thousands of hours chronicling the club and NZ rugby league for next to no money, and at personal cost, because he’s a true believer. The club is lucky to have him. Taking cheap shots at him is pathetic.
What I can’t stomach is suggesting Will does ‘fake news’ or is deliberately biased. Will has spent thousands of hours chronicling the club and NZ rugby league for next to no money, and at personal cost, because he’s a true believer. The club is lucky to have him. Taking cheap shots at him is pathetic.
Mitch Barnett pays back Andrew Webster’s faith as leadership needed at Mt Smart
While the Warriors’ leadership stocks have taken hit after hit this NRL season, co-captain Mitch Barnett’s continued rise has kept the club on track through what could have been a problematic period.
Since the end of the 2024 season, the Warriors’ leadership group has been heavily depleted.
In August, club great Shaun Johnson announced he would retire, before Tohu Harris did the same at the start of 2025.
Harris’ exit came after the departures of both Addin Fonua-Blake to the Cronulla Sharks and Marcelo Montoya to the Canterbury Bulldogs, before Dylan Walker was allowed to leave mid-season to join the Parramatta Eels.
While their collective leadership was boosted by the arrival of Kiwis captain James Fisher-Harris, a pectoral injury means the 29-year-old will be sidelined for up to six weeks.
What’s more, the loss of Fisher-Harris came in the wake of former Warriors captain Roger Tuivasa-Sheck suffering a hamstring injury, while former Kiwis captain Dallin Watene-Zelezniak is yet to play a minute this season after suffering a wrist injury in pre-season.
In those absences, though, Barnett has only grown. After signing for the Warriors in 2023, the 31-year-old has gone from strength to strength in Auckland – firstly by becoming an NRL-leading prop, before last year returning maiden call-ups for both New South Wales and Australia.
And after being named as the Simon Mannering medallist – the annual award for the Warriors’ best player – Barnett was elevated to co-captaincy permanently, after filling in for Harris last season.
As a leader, Barnett falls into the “do as I do, not what I say” camp. His high standards and demands of himself are matched by an equally high workrate on the field.
Even after Fisher-Harris limped from the field in the 42-14 defeat to the Melbourne Storm, the Warriors recorded back-to-back wins over the Brisbane Broncos and the Newcastle Knights.
Because of that, as the team head to Brisbane for a Magic Round clash against the North Queensland Cowboys, they’re doing so as a top-four NRL side.
For Andrew Webster, Barnett’s leadership and duty of care to his club and teammates is a feature of his game that he saw before he even became Warriors coach.
And while Barnett proved last year that he’s more than capable of leading the Warriors, this year has seen him reach another level.
“Mitch would be really satisfied with the difference in his leadership between this time and last year,” Webster explained.
“Last year, it was all around ‘I’ll show you the way with my actions’. He still leads exactly the same way, but he’s very polished at talking to the group, calming them down, and he’s also good at bringing his peers in.
“It’s quite funny, he got suspended for eight weeks when I coached against him at Penrith for hitting someone late. I couldn’t believe how aggressive he still is, but is so disciplined, calm and clear.
“When I got the job, I started watching him closely. I couldn’t believe his work ethic and how hard he tried. I thought he was going to make a big impact.
“When I rang him and spoke to him on the phone, I couldn’t believe how much he cared about the team, and how much of an impact he had. I thought that was leadership straight away.”
Barnett isn’t alone in shouldering the leadership burden, either. Even with that host of names unavailable, hooker Wayde Egan and second-rower Kurt Capewell have also shone.
That’s been vital, particularly in guiding arguably the most exciting core of young players the club has produced.
Most importantly, though, Barnett has the faith of the players.
Fisher-Harris’ arrival at the start of the year saw him instilled as an automatic choice to lead the Warriors, given his success both at test level with New Zealand and as a member of the Penrith Panthers’ premiership dynasty.
However, as Webster explained, Barnett made himself impossible to not be handed more responsibility by the time a captain was named following Harris’ retirement.
As a player, Chanel Harris-Tavita has been with the Warriors for the tenure of both Harris, and Tuivasa-Sheck, before he left the club in 2021.
And yet it’s Barnett’s approach that resonates the strongest for his charges.
“He’s a bit more vocal than Tohu,” said Harris-Tavita. “But he’s the same as Tohu in that he leads with his actions.
“As much as he talks at training and in games, he’s always doing the little things that not many people want to do.
“That’s why he has the respect of the whole team. Fish has been a big loss for us. But in the last few weeks, Barney has really progressed as a leader.
“It’s similar to last year; we lost a few players, were down on troops but Barney really stepped up and led us through that tough time.
“He’s doing the same thing now. It’s good that we’re getting results off the back of it.”
Barnett repays Webster's faith when Warriors need leaders
With other leaders retired, injured or leaving the club, Barnett hasn't faltered.
Big game for us. With Canberra vs Storm, a win here puts us in outright 3rd and 2 pts ahead of 4th and 6 pts ahead of 8th. Also given 13 wins are needed for finals, we'd already be halfway to finals before origin hits. And that's before our triple bangers are even back in the side (DWZ, RTS, JFH).
Having just rewatched a couple of the cowboys games, they play a lot like Manly. They like to go sideways a lot during their own half and take advantage of their speed on the edges and through their ball running spine players. They are also in the bottom half for completion rates however: their high risk play makes them susceptible to a rushing, compressed defensive line like ours. If we get them into a grind, we can force a lot of errors out of them. Even in that Titans game, they turned over a lot of ball that a better side would have converted into a bigger lead than 18-12 at half time.
it's also evident that their backline is both their greatest strength and greatest weakness. Jaxson Purdue and Derby are young talented speedsters who can finish tries from anywhere but they are also still learning the defensive game. They have had a couple of shockers this year- Olakuatu absolutely gave Purdue a bath in their first game of the year against Manly. If Leka is on that edge, Webby will know what to do. We already know about Vailea's weaknesses given his time here. He doesn't seem to have addressed those during his time at the cows. Bateman also isn't the same player he was at Canberra. He's now a poor man's Capewah with none of his defensive traits. The Vailea/Bateman edge has leaked quite a few pts also.
One thing we should be careful of is their bench. They have started slow in many of their games, but they score a lot of their tries in the 30-50 minute mark of games when they bring on Neame/Hess. They've turned a lot of games for them this year. Gotta look to mitigate that impact, so Ford, Demi and Bunty have an important defensive job to do when they come on. If we can do that, we'll go a long way to winning this game.
it's also evident that their backline is both their greatest strength and greatest weakness. Jaxson Purdue and Derby are young talented speedsters who can finish tries from anywhere but they are also still learning the defensive game. They have had a couple of shockers this year- Olakuatu absolutely gave Purdue a bath in their first game of the year against Manly. If Leka is on that edge, Webby will know what to do. We already know about Vailea's weaknesses given his time here. He doesn't seem to have addressed those during his time at the cows. Bateman also isn't the same player he was at Canberra. He's now a poor man's Capewah with none of his defensive traits. The Vailea/Bateman edge has leaked quite a few pts also.
One thing we should be careful of is their bench. They have started slow in many of their games, but they score a lot of their tries in the 30-50 minute mark of games when they bring on Neame/Hess. They've turned a lot of games for them this year. Gotta look to mitigate that impact, so Ford, Demi and Bunty have an important defensive job to do when they come on. If we can do that, we'll go a long way to winning this game.
Player of the year for me so far.
I was worried it may have been a sideways trade for Jazz and that he was too short to replace Tohu but week in, week out he has proved me wrong at every turn. Absolute masterstroke of a signing and hoping he can maintain his form...
I was worried it may have been a sideways trade for Jazz and that he was too short to replace Tohu but week in, week out he has proved me wrong at every turn. Absolute masterstroke of a signing and hoping he can maintain his form...
Nothing out of the ordinary. This team can do a job in the middle against the cows. Came across an interesting stat that we have the lowest number of tackles in our own 20 in the comp by far. We also have the highest number of tackles in the opposition 20 by far. If we repeat that trend for this game, we go a long way to shutting down the cows spine and winning this game.
Guru on the Bloke podcast made a comment about meeting them during Vegas. He mentioned how those young players in particular stick together and have formed a very close bond and how it reminded him of how tight players within the Penrith system were.
Not sure if seeing him on one news put him in your mind but great to see him further confirm that the group of him, Halasima, Vaimauga and Laban want to stay at the club long term. What a time to be a Warriors supporter