“I've got to improve, everyone else has got to improve, all I'm asking and all we're asking as a club is let's just improve our efforts. And that's not much.

That's not much at all.

And on the back of that, I'm sure we're going to have a much better season than what we did last year.

It's pretty challenging in certain areas, but everything comes back to us - if we don't have a good attitude, the failures are really poor for this club.

And it's all very simple, not over-analyzing anything, it's just keeping it very simple. If we get these right, the club will be much better off.

The last one is the most important one for me, it's looking after your mates.

Somewhere, sometime, we'll be in the trenches.

Somewhere, sometime, everyone will be at the front gates throwing rocks at us.

But we're going to look after ourselves internally.

And if we can tick these boxes, this will come naturally.

The thing that I want to do is make sure, if we can as an entire club work together, with those attitude improvements and a commitment like we've never seen before, the power will be outstanding.

The power will be outstanding.

Everyone is against us at the moment, every single person is against us.

We even put a fuckin' jumper up there and everyone in Australia and New Zealand takes the piss out of us.

Well fuck it!

Put that shit aside, let's do it for our fans, they're the most important part and ourselves.

Let's get in the trenches and work fucking hard and prove people wrong.

It starts with us though.

Everyone's got to put their hand up, we got to be transparent, and it's all about this open, honest communication, we can't afford to get to the end of the season and everyone goes 'oh fuck that didn't work'.

Ok? We have that responsibility, it's not hard.

I want to hear your voice, people being loud, I want to hear if you're struggling with different things, let's fix it, let's get on with it.

2020, we got to be all in it.

Every single one, if there's a fracture that breaks off, you can piss off.

We have got to be all in.”

The above is from Cameron George's speech to what appeared to be the whole Aotearoa Warriors club, in episode three of their 'All In' off-season series. Looking back, knowing what the Warriors served up in their first two games of the 2020 season presents a bunch of weird thoughts, obviously led by the severe disconnect between George's words and the actions of the footy team in those two games.

On the back of such a speech, nothing changed and that makes the motivation factor of the speech kinda funny as it didn't seem to whip up the desired result. Taking the actual footy stuff away though, puts this 'All In' idea into some different context as the club has quite clearly shown over the past few months that they are living, breathing the all in idea with regards to playing out the NRL season.

Every year/season, every professional sports outfit will roll out a new catchy phrase or idea. They may have one theme that they keep to themselves and a different theme for marketing purposes, they may blend those two ideas together as the Warriors did with 'All In'. All of this is to be expected though and as I generate a vision of Warriors folk passing round a broken finger, pondering different marketing ideas, the 'All In' theme may have been an interesting case of foresight.

Maybe someone reached deep into their loins and found a need for the Warriors to be all in for 2020. That would have definitely revolved around footy commitment as George laid out above, although the idea of there being some sub-conscious requirement for all in status with regards to life in 2020 is rather cute. Regardless, as the NRL season got underway for the Warriors, an intense connection to the idea of being all in started to seep through.

I wonder if the Warriors had to have some mental clarity in the sense of reminding themselves of what their club placed as a priority for 2020. As soon as the pandemic hit the NRL, there were all sorts of questions about the Warriors and their involvement in the 2020 season and upon reflection there was only one method; all in g.

This presents the dichotomy of the Warriors at this juncture.

The Warriors are currently living their 'All In' ethos with regards to their involvement in the NRL.

The Warriors also showed no signs of using that same ethos in their first two games of the season, performances that felt like a continuation from the 2019 season.

And here we are, ready for the NRL to resume.

Where will the 'All In' ethos take the Warriors as we continue through 2020?

I'm going to deliver Warriors yarns throughout the week and cover all the Warriors bases. This Monday yarn sets the scene and the past few days have also seen both Leeson Ah Mau and Jazz Tevaga suffer injuries, two middle forwards who I've got in a Warriors top-17. We'll find out tomorrow how coach Stephen Kearney is feeling about his forward pack (Tevaga didn't play in the first stanza) and this has me pondering two things:

Tahi) I discussed a Warriors forward pack pivot in this yarn and that pivot towards a younger forward pack, could be fast-tracked. We've already seen Eliesa Katoa, King Vuniyayawa and Jamayne Taunoa-Brown enter the equation, along with Josh Curran (played last year).

Rua) Also mentioned in that yarn about some new signings, was how the last few months don't reflect all that positively on new training guy Craig Twentyman. Even though there are numerous (at least three) major knee injuries and a lads dropping out with injuries frequently, it is extremely difficult to point that back to the athletic performance coach as I'd need extensive information and even then, it's still a stretch.

However, when the injuries are compounded by what I saw from the Warriors on the field in the first stanza then things get weird. The Warriors looked slow, sluggish and there was zero buzz, pizzazz, nip or plain energy in how the Warriors played. That is perhaps more troubling than the injuries, when combined with the injuries then it's super weird.

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