Winless Warriors ‘did what we had to do’

Warriors Nines coach Steve Mcnamara admitted the team never had much of a chance to win this year’s tournament.

The Warriors lost 14-10 to the Dragons yesterday to put them alongside the Bulldogs and Rabbitohs as the only teams not to win a game over the weekend.

There were boos in the crowd when they lost to the Dragons on Saturday evening and given the hype there had been around the team in the previous three Nines tournaments, it’s been a massive turnaround in the club’s philosophy towards the event.

‘‘We had to do what we did this year,’’ Mcnamara said, ’’for the good of the club and what we want to achieve moving forward.

‘‘We make no apologies for that, but we do understand that the people of Auckland want to see the best people play. But we’d rather them be out there in round one than for this, which they weren’t ready for.’’

Given that the majority of spectators at Eden Park buy their tickets to support the Warriors, they make think twice about forking out the money next year to see players they don’t know.’’

But a long-term problem for the Warriors has been their slow starts to NRL campaigns, which is why the stars have been sitting in the stands this weekend.

Mcnamara believes their fans will understand the decision taken by the club. ’’I think when they look at the squad we put out there and the promising young players, the opportunity we’ve given to those players, they’ll understand it would have been a very tough task for us to win this competition,’’ he said.

‘‘But hopefully they will be there for round one and will see a really strong performance from ourselves.’’

Warriors Nines captain Ruben Wiki felt the young players will get plenty out of the weekend and didn’t agree the club went too far down the road of leaving out experienced players. ’’It’s the only way to learn, to put them in the lion’s den and hope they’ll get better from that,’’ Wiki said.