Are the Warriors for real? We’re about to find out

Shaun Johnson lines up a penalty in the Warriors versus Cowboys, NRL Rugby League match at Mt Smart Stadium, Auckland, on 15 April 2023.
Photo: Photosport / Andrew Cornaga

Opinion – Three games, three results, 12 days. That’s the scenario facing the Warriors right now, as their hot form to start the NRL season will meet a severe test in the form of the Storm, Roosters and Panthers.

Even as well as they’re going, three Warriors wins are looking unlikely. The Roosters look prime for the plucking at Mt Smart as they haven’t won an away game yet this year, but while the Panthers dropped their last match to the Rabbitohs, the reigning premiers will be going into the Warriors clash off what should be a straightforward win over the Tigers.

But really, the whole mood around the Warriors and what they’re capable of could hinge off the first and most hyped game of the trio: The Storm, in Melbourne, on Anzac Day.

Just that last sentence is enough to send a shiver down the spine of any Warriors fan, given that the last time this fixture got played, it went very badly. The 70-10 loss, the largest in the club’s history, was such a shock to the system, it’s almost completely forgotten that the Warriors had won three in a row leading into it.

In fact, they won their next match after it too, but it felt like the damage inflicted by the Storm that night shook the Warriors’ foundations so much it eventually led to the walkout of coach Nathan Brown and the subsequent season disintegration.

The most horrifying aspect of the Warriors’ loss to the Storm was that they were very much in the game at halftime. The score at that stage was 16-10 to the home side, but whatever was said in the sheds led to the Storm gashing the Warriors for an unbelievable 54 unanswered points in the second half.

So far this year, we’ve heard a lot about the changes made on and off the field by coach Andrew Webster. If you’ve paid a visit to Mt Smart at all this year, it’s hard not to get caught up in the wave of positivity surrounding the Warriors and that’s entirely understandable.

This is the first year since 2019 that they actually have a locked in home schedule, new signing Dylan Walker is playing so well there’s talk of a recall to the NSW Origin side, while veteran Shaun Johnson is finding the sort of form that made him one of the NRL’s star players.

But this is where the rubber meets the road. Webster has been at pains to point out that the NRL is a grind, that it’s not won in the first few rounds, and that the Warriors have to keep improving if they’re to have any chance of competing at the business end of the season. He’s 100 percent correct, which means that a loss alone to the Storm won’t create the sort of panic that could disrupt all the good work they’ve done so far.

The key is simply in how the team plays. Going down to a Storm side containing the likes of Cam Munster, Jahrome Hughes, Harry Grant and Nelson Asofa-Solomona isn’t a disgrace, as long as they don’t do so in a disgraceful way like last year. If the Warriors can show the same sort of mental fortitude that saw them shake off setbacks in their fixtures against the Bulldogs and Cowboys, simply show some fight, then really that’s all fans need to see.

This is in no way suggesting that this is how the team themselves feel, though. The Anzac Day clash is always going to be a marker for the way the team performs for a season, much more so than their opponents, and a win would shoot the already soaring Warriors hype levels into the stratosphere.