Another solid season for Simon Mannering, just needs to eat a few more metres.

As you are going to find out, I'm rather confused about the work of our three veteran back-rowers this season. The New Zealand Warriors are graced with two Kiwis representatives in Simon Mannering and Bodene Thompson, along with their club skipper, New South Wales and Australian representative which should be a bloody cracking combination, especially as they can all play 80 minutes of tough NRL footy.

Ryan Hoffman

The skipper for the Warriors didn't enjoy the best start to his new job and despite the disappointment of the season, I actually felt as though Hoffman turned the corner and ended up being one of the better players from Mt Smart. Hoffman played 23 games this season and in all of those games he stayed on the park for the duration, with his best work coming off of Thomas Leuluai's hip as the bread and butter for Hoffman is running hard and at good angles.

When Hoffman did this, the Warriors often got a little roll on down their left edge and with Solomone Kata often doing something on the back of this, Hoffman's work was crucial but often slept on. There isn't a whole lot else in Hoffman's game as he doesn't have the all-round skill of a Wade Graham, nor does he have the athleticism and footwork of Tohu Harris, nor does he have the sheer power of Josh Papalii (all of whom play left edge for their respective clubs). There's a limited nature to what Hoffman can do which doesn't give the Warriors too many options, however moving forward we could see Hoffman form a very slick combination with whoever plays the left-sided half.

That would allow Hoffman to do a similar job to what he did at Melbourne alongside Cooper Cronk, or what Gavin Cooper does with Jonathan Thurston. Hoffman is the sort of edge forward who feeds off of the quality of his half, instead of creating for himself and while we saw glimpses of this with Leuluai, the limited role Leuluai was given in attack hindered Hoffman's ability to impact a game. In theory, having Hoffman, Kata, maybe Manu Vatuvei and Foran/Lolohea/Hingano as a left edge should be extremely dangerous so I'm more interested in how this develops as opposed to whinging about 2016.

We've got to assume that Hoffman now knows just how bloody hard being the Warriors skipper is. Whether it is the weight of public expectation, raising standards within the club or dealing with referees and what not, Hoffman will benefit greatly from getting a season as Warriors skipper in the books. The key that we need to look out for next season is how the players respond to what Hoffman's saying/shouting as this season he appeared to have little influence on his troops.

Bodene Thompson

Perhaps the hardest bloke to really get a gauge on this season was Thompson as he looked like a gem on many occasions, but somehow went missing on many occasions as well. Thompson is a bit different to Hoffman in that he relies more on power and footwork to get in-between defenders, with a splash of speed giving him a point of difference which worked well in combination with Shaun Johnson's wide variety of skills.

It appears as though Thompson has some x-factor, however I'm not quite convinced and as long as the defending team had a few bodies in front of him, Thompson was easily contained. When there's a few gaps thanks to the Warriors have a slight overlap, or inside defenders relaxing from their job, Thompson stood out as a dynamic ball-runner who could skip this way and that, causing all sorts of problems.

In eight of his 18 games, Thompson had less than 10 carries while Hoffman had less than 10 carries just once. This may be because Johnson ran the footy himself, or because Thompson ran a decoy line for the fullback to get the footy and so it's hard to lay the blame on anyone in particular here. The issue is that Thompson averaged 9m per-carry, had twice as many line breaks as Hoffman (8 vs 4) and averaged an offload a game (same as Hoffman) which basically means that when Thompson has the footy, good things tend to happen. For whatever reason, Thompson wasn't quite able to flourish and it just never felt like the Warriors were getting the most out of him.

Simon Mannering

This season marked what is now a pretty heavy-duty love/hate relationship with Mannering. How can you not love him? He tackles his heart out in the middle of the field, he's got a good pair of hands so he can play the link between the hooker and the half/ball-runner and you know exactly the sort of effort you will get from him each and every week.

However, Mannering is not Jason Taumalolo or Sio Siua Taukeiaho or even Paul Gallen. While a bunch of NRL teams have moved away from the tackling machine type of No.13, zoning in on a power/footwork/offload combination, Mannering kinda sits in no-man's-land with his style of footy. Mannering averaged 47.4 tackles a game and only averaged 1.3 missed tackles which is great, yet the Warriors were 12th in run metres and in 22 games this season, Mannering ran over 100m just eight times.

Funnily enough, the Warriors won seven of those eight games in which Mannering ran over 100m. There's two ways to look at that; Mannering's metres helped the Warriors out greatly, or Mannering only made metres when the Warriors were on top of their opposition/playing weaker opposition. I'll leave it up to y'all how your perceive that.

This leaves us in a very weird position where we must contemplate that Mannering just isn't giving the Warriors what they need in attack. I'd happily trade a few tackles for more metres because it's pretty clear that the focus on tackling didn't help the Warriors win, plus Mannering is a reflection of the Warriors trying to play catch-up with the NRL as the competition has drifted past the tackling machine lock.

The role of Mannering will be something to keep a close eye on with Stephen Kearney's arrival. Whether Kearney has other ideas for Mannering's role will be interesting and I do think that Mannering is good enough as a footy player to switch things up slightly, still playing in the No.13 jersey.

Bunty Afoa

We got a brief glimpse at Afoa and from that small sample size, it looks as though we've got a dynamic, enthusiastic power-house waiting in the wings. Pondering how Afoa fits into the Warriors next season though is difficult, mainly because Hoffman and Thompson both play 80 minutes which doesn't leave much room for Afoa.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see Afoa spend more time through the middle, as it's Afoa's speed and footwork which could help push the Warriors further towards that style of footy. Whether Afoa comes off the bench in place of a prop or Mannering at lock, it's best to view Afoa as a middle forward and while Afoa could struggle to get into the best-17, don't sleep on him impressing coach Kearney this summer.