The 2020 NRL season lasted two games, giving us a teeny weeny window into what the 2020 Aotearoa Warriors looked like. Obviously, assessing the Warriors based on two games is a rather flawed process and this puts a lid on any significant judgements that can be made. A couple bad games can quickly turned into a winning streak, or in the Warriors case a couple bad games could be flipped into being consistently inconsistent. Either way, forecasting what this season may have looked like would be silly and not actually necessary.

To set the scene, here's how I was approaching this season and try to approach most Warriors seasons; clean slate and hopeful of some improvement. While every Warriors fan and observer carries with them a couple hefty suitcases of emotional baggage, doing so only limits my perception of the Warriors and the insights I can offer. To be effective, I kinda have to have that fresh mentality at the start of the season and then report on what I see.

Improvement and development? Well, that's merely a product of circumstance as when the same group is together for multiple seasons (and off-seasons) in a professional environment, improvement and development is to be expected. This is more difficult when different people are in and out each year, different combinations and all of that, so such improvement can't be expected to this level. Think about any team environment you operate in and how smooth processes or systems can be when that little team has been doing that thing together for years - chuck a couple new folks in and thing slow down.

In the Warriors case, everything was aligned for an expectation of improvement. Stephen Kearney's been the coach for a few years now and there is a group of leaders who are in tune with what coach Kearney wants, while the younger players have come up through the club during Kearney's tenure. In theory, there should be a clear playing style, individual and team skill development and diving deeper into the team identity. To grind this down to greater simplicity; at this point there should be a variety of nifty trick-plays involving Blake Green and Roger Tuivasa-Sheck for example.

Those who read the Niche Cache regularly will know that none of this appeared to occur in the two games of the 2020 season. I don't need to get into the details, let's just settle on words like clunky, lethargic, butter-fingers and sloppy. While these two games may not be a fair reflection on what the 2020 season could have been, in dealing with the facts, 2020 started out as if it was going to be a six month Warriors nightmare.

Here are some major statistics from 2018, 2019 and the two-game 2020 season. Other than some blatant eye-test stuff, these rankings tell the story of a Warriors team that has either plateaued at mediocrity or got worse. Those in bold are stats in which the Warriors have got worse, the rest are similar levels of mediocrity...

Penalties Conceded: 5th (2018) - 10th (2019) - 4th (2020).

Errors: 15th - 14th - 8th.

Supports: 15th - 16th - 6th.

Post Contact Metres: 3rd - 2nd - 12th.

Line Engaged: 3rd - 9th - 6th.

Tackle Breaks: 11th - 10th - 11th.

Tries: 10th - 10th - 16th.

Linebreaks: 7th - 6th -16th.

Dummy Half Runs: 8th - 9th -13th.

Missed Tackles: 4th - 4th - 3rd.

Run Metres: 6th - 11th - 13th.

Possession: 9th (48) - 12th (49.3) - 12th (48.5).

Points Per Game: 11th -10th - 16th.

Try Assist: 7th - 9th - 16th.

Decoy Runs: 4th -12th -13th.

Offloads: 1st - 4th - 14th.

You don't need a synopsis of the above from me as all of that speaks for itself. Now would be a good time to raise the pre-season narrative of the playing group apparently sharing their thoughts with the team's style of play, perhaps in conjunction with how their fitness regime is built. We could beat around the bush with bits and bobs of fluff, although my connecting of the dots suggest that this played out with Alex Corvo departing the Warriors and Craig Twentyman replacing Corvo as part of a stylistic overhaul.

Styles need substance and there wasn't any substance from which the style could flourish. I'm not going theorize about who is the better trainer or whatever, the above statistics don't reflect positively on the new regime (or the old) and that's pretty damn clear. On top of that, there is what we all saw when watching the Warriors and my observation was an NRL team that can't keep up. Not keeping up with Newcastle Knights and Canberra Raiders? Not good and rather boring.

Somehow there were three major knee injuries in 2020 as Bunty Afoa, Jackson Frei and Taane Milne were all scratched in the pre-season or those two games. This happened, like those statistics above and as don't have any legit medical knowledge, offering opinion as to how or why there was a cluster of knee injuries early in the year. All I know is that it happened, just like the Warriors being one of the worst tackling teams in the NRL for the past three years.

Big boss man Cameron George started the summer with a lovely rant via the Warriors pre-season video stuff. This along with the Swanndri style jersey gimmick gave many people a reason to chuckle at the Warriors, yet throughout this period the Warriors seemed to own such instances and did so with confidence. The whole premise of George's speech was well intended and I'm sure everyone in that room was tapped in, yet there is plenty of evidence to suggest that none of ended up being true.

These are strange times for the Warriors. There are some positives such as scouting and recruiting a talent like Eliesa Katoa, although the fact that Katoa made such an impression doesn't reflect well on those more established players (almost the whole playing group). The Warriors handled the recent predicament as well as one could hope for and in the murky waters of NRL footy, where nothing seems to be overly efficient or legit professional, the Warriors as an organisation is rather solid.

And yet we have a two game stretch in which all the woes that get packed into the suitcases of emotional baggage were on display. Perhaps even worse. Nothing was better and nothing changed, while the fact that some aspects of Warriors footy were genuinely worse is a dark cloud that lingers.

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Peace and love 27.