She’s a hard road but I’ve just got to keep the faith
Just as the Vanilla Ice days of hip-hop gave way to better times and tunes, so the Warriors are bound find themselves on song eventually.
WEtruly live in troubled times.
When white middle class males struggle to get up the political ladder in New Zealand and the US president spends his first overseas trip telling off European leaders for not paying bills, thank goodness that for distraction, we can turn to sport.
I have the Warriors. ‘‘Alas,’’ you may cry, ‘‘isn’t that akin to relying on seals for security when you have to swim through a pod of killer whales?’’
Because, this season, the Warriors have been like the addicts you see on that Bravo TV show Intervention: everyone’s desperate for them to do well, but sometimes they inexplicably let themselves down and lead their supporters to despair if they’ll succeed.
The higher the pre-season hopes, the bigger the venom that comes with the club’s inevitable collapse. With this year’s roster, the pre-season hopes were through the roof. Hence the venom and despair seems the worst it’s been for ages.
And now, this week, the club is giving away one of those homegrown young stars that you never like to see leave. Tuimoala Lolohea was as much a part of the fabric of the club as the tongue is a part of the logo.
He’s one of West Auckland’s proudest sons and a schoolboy star who excelled for the club’s under-20s. It was easy to imagine him going on to be a part of a premiership-winning senior side.
Time will tell whether Lolohea will, like so many young stars let go by the Warriors, come back and hurt them for opposition teams. But the change of scene could be the best thing for him: and not just because the Warriors’ playing fortunes seems to be in the doldrums.
You always know the Warriors are at a low ebb when Aussies begin calling for the them to be kicked out of the competition. It’s as predictable and annoying as Auckland’s traffic snarling up even worse when it rains.
One commentator here wrote that until the Warriors showed themselves worthy of support, it was time for fans to turn their backs on the club.
For Warriors supporters since day none, that’s a weighty thing to consider – similar to carrying out an intervention for a loved one and promising to walk out of their lives if they don’t go into rehab. But perhaps this could be an appropriate response to the team’s below par performance.
But try as I might, I just couldn’t walk away. It’s not that the club would notice – they have an army of loyal fans who will turn up to Mt Smart til the cows come home, as long as those cows are wearing Warriors jerseys.
It’s just that supporting a sports team isn’t a quid pro quo relationship where you promise to be loyal as long as they do something for you. Just ask Chicago Cubs fans who waited 108 years for their team to win the baseball World Series.
Sports teams are vast organisms with many heads and they’ll go through their highs and lows whether you’re looking or not.
For me, the Warriors are the NRL club that represents league
supporting a sports team isn’t a quid pro quo relationship where you promise to be loyal as long as they do something for you.’
fans in New Zealand. Like them or not, they’re our team, so you may as well just hang in there and enjoy all the other lessons that come with being a sports fan: like attaching yourself to something bigger than yourself, handling disappointment, learning not to attach your happiness to external things, having an excuse to go to the pub, showing compassion.
If league seasons were periods in hip-hop, the Warriors would be in 1990-91, in that era ruled by Vanilla Ice, C+C Music Factory andMCHammer. But, remember, those dark days also gave way to the glory years of A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul who, in turn, heralded a golden era of hiphop music.
So it could be with the Warriors. I predict from here on, there will be a remarkable turnaround until, once again, they find themselves knocking on the door of the play-offs. Scoff all you like, it’s my right to have fantasies like that... because that’s another thing that comes with being a supporter.
Fa’amalosi Warriors.