Diary Of An Aotearoa Warriors Fan: Lots Of Injuries and The Saviour Jack Murchie
The past few days have seen more injuries, perhaps a loan player or two and a fresh Aussie middle forward eager to make an impact this season for Aotearoa Warriors as they wiggle towards an NRL re-start. The least funky of those topics is the loan player thing and of course the NRL shouldn't be trusted to roll out such common sense, I'm not of the view that the Warriors will be greatly assisted by having a loan player or a couple of them come in.
Acquiring a loaned player or two will help the Warriors depth and perhaps their training quality as they'll have extra bodies to work with. Such players will not have any major impact on the Warriors and if you're a fan who believes that this will be a massive boost for the Warriors, then maybe wait for the reality check.
Why has this come about though? The start of the pando situation saw the idea of loan players mentioned as the Warriors needed to walk through the logistics of battling on through the pando and subsequent lockdowns. Then, we've recently had even more injuries come into the mix to further blunt the Warriors roster and I'm far more interested in this injury situation that could be rotten luck, or evidence of new systems not working.
I've rambled on about this in various Diary Of An Aotearoa Warriors Fan things as these injuries came to be and it's an interesting case to observe; Alex Corvo gets cut kinda via a player revolt, Stephen Kearney somewhat alludes to this but more in a playing style reference and Cameron George alluded to this in his pre-season rant as players needed to speak up sooner, then Craig Twentyman comes in from a different training background and with different ideas around training.
The above paragraph involves some facts and me connecting some dots. Further dots connected suggest a general shift away from volume training to more power-based training, which aligns with Corvo's vibe as a hard-nut Aussie league trainer and Twentyman previously working with Australia Sevens rugby. Again, this is merely how I'm assessing the Warriors injury situation and this isn't gospel, merely me connecting dots.
One of those dots is a heap of injuries. I hit up the NRL.com 'Casualty Ward' to check out the general injury situation across the NRL and see where the Warriors stack up - this is only based off the information from NRL.com. The Warriors currently have eight injured players (Gerard Beale, Nathaniel Roache, Jazz Tevaga, Leeson Ah Mau, Adam Keighran, Taane Milne, Jackson Frei, Bunty Afoa) and eight injured players puts the Warriors 2nd, behind Brisbane Broncos who have 10 listed injuries.
To provide an easy split: five teams have at least seven injuries, 11 teams have five or fewer injuries.
Obviously that's not good, although one could understand that general injuries are often related to luck.
In dealing with knee injuries, things get interesting. The Warriors have six knee injuries, one is Beale's horror show from last season and then five came in 2020 and all five of this knee injuries are what I'd consider mid/long-term injures (multi-month). Only the Broncos with four mid-term knee injuries are close to the Warriors and the Broncos do not have anyone who is set to miss the season via a knee injury. Wests Tigers have three knee injuries; one long-term and two scheduled to return next weekend.
That leaves 13 NRL teams with two or less knee injuries.
The Warriors have six knee injuries, 13 NRL teams have two or less. Five clubs have no knee injuries.
Leeson Ah Mau's knee injury is the only Warriors 'injury' that is not knee-related and along with those knee injuries, the Warriors have one of two cases of the bugger that is a pectoral injury - Patrick Mago's out with a pec for Rabbitohs.
That leaves us with a Warriors group that isn't the most injured by quantity, but does have the largest group of serious/long-term injuries. Remember that this is compounded by the Warriors performances on the field so far this season in which they were the only NRL team who didn't make a linebreak or score a legit try in two games. With all that epic off-season training, the Warriors were also third in missed tackles.
Maybe it's because everyone's feeling warm and fuzzy about the Warriors' efforts to partake in the 2020 NRL season, as everyone appears to be viewing this cluster of injuries in isolation. The Warriors have the most knee and 'serious' injuries of the NRL as well as putting together one of the worst two-game stretches that I can remember. Something's not working.
That is in contrast to what I feel is working with the Warriors and that's their scouting department, which is assumed to be led by Peter O'Sullivan. Again, I've covered this numerous times and don't want to repeat stuff to much for regular readers, but for those coming in fresh; the Warriors have made a focused effort over the past two years to sign younger, fringe-NRL players from Australia with skew towards bigger bodies.
I'm also high on the Warriors scouting/recruitment at the lower levels where they have quietly assembled some of the best dual-code talent in Auckland and Aotearoa. I'll leave that for my annual Warriors scouting/recruitment yarn though and focus on the NRL group here.
Signing Jack Murchie from Canberra Raiders, fits this trend immensely and helps me to further understand the trend. Murchie is similar, if not in the same situation to Lachlan Burr, Josh Curran, Wayde Egan, Jackson Frei and Jamayne Taunoa-Brown, while also being aligned with my hunch that size matters to some extent with regards to recruitment. Murchie is listed at 193cm tall, which immediately puts him in the taller bracket of Warriors forwards and as I expect Murchie to play through the middle, Taunoa-Brown is the only current middle forward who is apparently taller than Murchie (194cm).
I do believe Murchie will roll through the middle, especially as Eliesa Katoa is currently the Warriors best player and having Katoa on one edge, Tohu Harris on the other is rather delightful. Up until this season, Murchie had predominantly played edge for Mounties but 2020 saw Murchie move to the middle as he started the first/only Canterbury Cup game of the season in the middle.
Murchie only played 33 minutes through the middle, but showcased the level of oomph and efficiency that the Warriors need; 7 runs for 75m, 29 post-contact-metres and 2 tackle busts. I dove deeper into some recent Murchie stats for our email thing, so sign up for stuff like this...
What intrigued me about signing Murchie, was that Murchie is part of a minor exodus at Canberra Raiders with JJ Collins and Luke Bateman both returning to Queensland. All three of these lads have been stuck in reserve grade recently and I wondered why three Raiders depth forwards all opted to leave in roughly the same week. For Collins and Bateman, it seems to be taking this opportunity to suss out life away from footy given that they're not going to be doing much with no Canterbury Cup footy.
Murchie was in a similar spot, as he was unlikely to be playing much Raiders footy this year unless the stars aligned. For all three, I don't think the Raiders wanted these blokes to leave but opportunities presented themselves for them to find greater security and with regards to Murchie, that's in favour of the Warriors.
Here is my Warriors top-17 right now...
Fullback: Roger Tuivasa-Sheck.
Wings: Ken Maumalo, Patrick Herbert.
Centres: Peta Hiku, David Fusitu'a.
Halves: Blake Green, Chanel Harris-Tavita.
Middles: Lachlan Burr, Adam Blair, Isaiah Papali'i.
Edges: Eliesa Katoa, Tohu Harris.
Hooker: Wayde Egan.
Bench: Kodi Nikorima, Jamayne Taunoa-Brown, Jack Murchie, King Vuniyayawa.
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