Right now, it's safe to say that our Warriors aren't too good. When the Warriors roll up and play as they did in New Plymouth, playing as they did at the end of last season, it makes writing these diary entries bloody tough.

Not because I'm drowning my sorrows, feeling all shitty about my fandom of the Warriors. Nah, that's no drama, what makes it difficult is that coming up with new ideas or angles to approach a Warriors loss isn't that easy. Last year I found myself highlighting the same issues on a weekly basis, I got tired of writing all that and here I am, once again struggling to really offer some sort of insight.

Last week there was hope, thanks to the efforts of Jacob Lillyman and Ben Matulino. Two representative props who both ran over 100m against the Panthers and their work against the Raiders reflects where the Warriors are at right now as Lillyman could only manage 76m off 10 carries in 42 minutes and Matulino put up a glorious 9 carries for 62m in 51 minutes.

You can't expect much from the Warriors when their two best props are well below 100m each and their numbers look horrible when put up against Shannon Boyd's 97m off 12 carries in only 33 minutes and Paul Vaughan's 147m off 15 carries in 46 minutes.

Our marquee props were out-played by guys who have peaked at City vs Country level.

Our marquee props were out-played by Sam Lisone, who came off the bench and ran for 111m off 14 carries in 24 minutes. Lisone had more carries than Lillyman and Matulino, despite playing half the minutes ... yeah.

Knock, knock ... who's there? Ah, Confusing Cappy! You're back, we missed you ... kinda.

Confusing Cappy is coach Andrew McFadden, who only lets Lisone play 24 minutes and didn't play any of our bench players for more than 25 minutes. So no Warriors bench player played more than 25 minutes, while no Raiders bench player played less than 24 minutes. 

And this comes as Confusing Cappy has selected the same bench for consecutive games just once this season. I can't stress how silly that is and while I really want Confusing Cappy to pick and stick, giving guys time to build on previous performances etc, I suspect he will keep chopping and changing.

Put yourself in the boots of Lisone, Jazz Tevaga, John Palavi, James Gavet, Albert Vete, Shaun Lane or Charlie Gubb for a second. You are a young lad, good enough to play in the NRL but every week is different, you don't know if you're playing or not, you don't know what role you're going to play, no idea about your minutes and all you want to do is play as much footy as possible. None of what I've seen from Confusing Cappy resembles the rather simple blueprint laid down by other NRL coaches on how to develop young forwards.

Simon Mannering came back from injury and made three errors. There was plenty of talk out of the Warriors about how Mannering improves their defence, tightening up the middle of the field and while Mannering made 47 tackles, he did little to improve anything of the Warriors' defence. 

The experienced group of Mannering, Matulino, Lillyman, Bodene Thompson, Ryan Hoffman, Thomas Leuluai and Shaun Johnson missed 17 tackles between them. 17 of 31 missed tackles from the whole team. 

Jordan Rapana broke 8 tackles while the Warriors backline combined for 2 tackle busts.

Another frustrating aspect of the Warriors play was the domination of Shaun Johnson. I've said many times that I am yet to see Johnson control an NRL game by himself as a halfback in the NRL and that he needs a bloke next to him that eases the burden, takes control of his job and allows Johnson to play like an Anthony Milford or Blake Austin. 

While the Raiders split touches (25 for Austin, 32 for Sezer) and the kicking duties (5 kicks, 184m for Austin, 6 kicks, 181m for Sezer) rather evenly, there was nothing even about the split in workload between Johnson and Leuluai. 

Johnson had 51 touches, Leuluai had 34 touches.

Johnson kicked 13 times for 228m, Leuluai kicked once for 39m.

Johnson hasn't shown that he can really control a footy game for 80 minutes, that he can lead the Warriors around the park and produce the razzle dazzle that we love him for. So why is Johnson being asked to do that?

It's all pretty confusing really, at least we've got a bye this weekend to let things simmer down.

If you've made your way through all those rather sad stats and musings about our team, then you deserve some opinions about recent rumours. Today, one Australian NRL rumour hound updated a whisper regarding Leuluai, who is being hunted by a bunch of English clubs while another rumour hound ran a yarn about Manu Vatuvei possibly being on the outer, oh and that Konrad Hurrell still looks likely to be a Gold Coast Titan before the June 30 deadline.

We knew about Hurrell x Titans and the more that I think about it, the more I like it for Hurrell. 
Vatuvei's rumour is interesting. As Manu is a fine winger and a club legend, I suspect the Warriors have paid a lot more for a winger than what NRL clubs would pay for a winger. If people want to talk about Hurrell taking up a chunk of the salary cap, then they had better cast a gaze towards Vatuvei as well. Vatuvei constantly battles injury and isn't quite delivering, in any aspect so he's not exactly earning his cash. 

Letting Vatuvei go, would be a wise business move for the Warriors, as releasing Leuluai would be. The rumour hound said that Super League clubs would struggle to match Leuluai's salary at the Warriors, which suggests that Leuluai is also on a hefty amount and at the moment it's hard to argue that he's offering much value for money.

NRL clubs don't care about sentimental value and as we constantly hear, it's a business baby.