There’s a funny thing going on with the balance of the universe when the Aotearoa Warriors are making the NRL Finals and not only making it but looking bloody good in the process. It’s especially funny coming at that from a Welly Nix perspective because guess which other New Zealand club based in an Australian competition has a bit of a struggle when it comes to making the playoffs? Hint: it ain’t the Auckland Tuatara.

The Warriors-Phoenix thing goes way deeper. If you’ve got a passing interest in rugby league in this country and you aren’t reading TNC’s Diary of an Aotearoa Warriors Fan stuff then you’re missing out. Consider the ol’ horn well and truly tooted but here at The Niche Cache we’ve always tried to offer an antidote to the usual ground-level Warriors discussions. There’s no club that gets a worse rap, not even the Auckland Blues. The Warriors have been a synonym for failure and disappointment, for sloppiness and poor team culture. The diehards say Keep The Faith but the average punter treats them like a punchline. (While we here offer some desperately needed balance – support us on Patreon!)

Part of that, let’s be honest, is due to the fragility of the rugby union crowd in NZ. Part of it is also down to the Warriors’ own on-field inconsistencies, sometimes going from the most dazzling highs to the most devastating lows in the space of a half-time break. It’s a feeling that’s permeated throughout the mainstream media in this country and don’t even get me started on the way the Wozzas get covered across the ditch. Irony is that, as inconsistent as the team has so often been, people lazily labelling them as inconsistent so as not to have to offer any deeper detail is as consistent as it gets. Before the season, on the spasming corpse that is Channel Nine’s rugby league programming, Billy Slater mentioned the Warriors as a possible surprise team and got laughed out of the room. By other respected rugby league legends/current players.

To the Aussie RL media, the Warriors aren’t just a punchline but the entire joke.

At least that’s better than the way the Wellington Phoenix have constantly had their entire existence threatened by the Fox Sports team that covers the A-League. There’s nothing useful about being that disreputable about the league you’re employed to cover, no wonder the A-League has a credibility problem (and that’s not even close to the worst element of it). But even if those muppets do change their tune from an openly hostile one – and the employment of their old buddy Mark Rudan seems to have already gone a long way towards finally earning the Nix some benefit of the doubt – then a merely dismissive one is about the best that Wellington Phoenix HQ could expect because that’s about all that they’ve earned.

Back in Aotearoa there’s plenty of fermented disappointment and frustration regarding the Wellington Phoenix. What there hasn’t been yet is that outright laughing stock status that the Warriors have for so long been stuck with, steady as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The last two seasons, basically since Stephen Kearney took over, the Warriors have been making sturdy strides towards being a dependable, winning team whilst still being unable to escape the same old jabs. See, it’s always been all or nothing with the public perception of this team.

Obviously the Warriors have been hard done by and then some. The Wellington Phoenix, meanwhile, have been able to hide behind the Warriors and get away with stupid development after stupid development. The licence thing is a tough hand to deal with but the way they folded over it earlier in the year, refusing to comment until after the narrative had gotten away from them, was an unnecessary emotional rollercoaster for fans at a sensitive time. Rob Morrison ripping on journalists for asking him about comments he’d made regarding Mark Rudan twelve months earlier certainly didn’t help either – of course he didn’t have to know him by reputation back then but he also could’ve handled that like a human adult and not a harpooned whale thrashing in the open seas. Not keeping players like Mike McGlinchey or Logan Rogerson up to date about their contract status, leading to their departures. Allowing Matt Ridenton to escape from them after his breakthrough season. Chris Greenacre getting a third separate caretaker manager gig at the same club.

This club has dealt us some absolute trash in the last twelve months and that’s before even bringing up the all or nothing gamble that was Darije Kalezic, a gamble that shredded their last bit of on-field credibility and led us to this point now where Mark Rudan is having to rebuild almost from scratch. This is where we are right now. This is the state of this club. It’s not all their own doing but that hardly matters at this point.

Luckily Rudy’s been a breath of fresh air. There’s even confidence that he might be able to win a few games, what with his uncompromising approach towards reshaping the team culture and all that. It’d be nice if he did, you know. One finals appearance in the last six seasons and it ended in a tame 2-0 defeat at home to Melbourne City. Remember what happened that season? The Nix were first on the ladder with a month to go in the regular season and proceeded to win just one of their final five games and then came the home finals defeat. And they only won that one game because Kenny Cunningham scored a 95th minute winner. Go on and explain why that capitulation is any better than the worst of the Warriors. Because it’s not.

Everyone acknowledges that the Phoenix have sucked since then. They’re just grateful the Warriors have been there to shield them from wider public scrutiny beyond the football community. Of course, there are other reasons for that disparity too: the scope of the sports, the different cities involved, don’t wanna say it but there’s undeniably a racial element too.

But the Warriors are winning games and leading by example now. If the Nix find themselves getting tarred and feathered in the kiwi media soon then they can’t say they don’t deserve it. You won’t get that level of hysteria on TNC but hysteria is what those other jokers deal in. The Nix are suddenly exposed.

Mark Rudan is having to deal with those symptomatic issues now. Oh, so a few local dudes don’t want to trial? Look at it from their point of view: there’s a whole world of footy clubs out there and they’re being asked to trial for one which might not even exist in two seasons. There’s a reason nobody blamed Matt Ridenton for jumping ship to Newcastle. It’d be braver of him not to at this point. You only have to look at the Warriors right now to know that old reputations die hard and the Nix are two years behind them with their own recalibration project.

Winning is a habit and losing is too. Long-term struggles begin to seep into the turf and the longer they have to soak in, the harder it is to get rid of the stench. This is what Mark Rudan is trying to systematically overcome. This is what he’s up against. You can’t forget that this is his first gig at this level of management too, so he’s got something to prove and wants to see the same hunger in the players he signs. Dude’s made that very clear so far. No excuses will be accepted. No compromises will be allowed.

Unfortunately the no compromises thing has severely limited his pool of local talent to choose from as there simply aren’t that many kiwi players out there of a Phoenix standard who wouldn’t require at least some sacrifice on the club’s part. Could they do that? Mate, of course they could. In fact they probably should be doing that, for the benefit of the sport in this country.

However that’s not the character that Mark Rudan is. He was extremely picky about his next step in management, having turned down at least one A-League offer in the past. With the Nix he’s inherited a club in such a state that, providing he’s willing and we already know he is, will pretty much give him the keys to the castle to try and save things. It’s not easy to admit to the psychic damage left behind from the last half-decade of inadequacy at the Wellington Phoenix but, take my word for it, it’s real. Even if the club’s been able to mostly slide it under the wider kiwi sports rug until now.

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Keep cool but care.