Watson keeps Warriors’ faith
David Long sits down with club owner Eric Watson to discuss another tough year.
David Long: You’ve appointed Stephen Kearney as the new coach, set up a separate football board and are looking to sign Kieran Foran? Do you ever think ‘geez, what else can I do to make this a successful club?’ Eric Watson: Yes, all the time! But there is always something else you can do and that’s the challenge of business and sport is business.
Finding what else you can do is challenging and also exciting.
I think New Zealanders get that this is actually quite hard, I said to the guys last night [Tuesday], we’ve proven how difficult this is, there’s no-one that doesn’t believe us and we can stop losing now and actually start proving that we’re good enough to win.
But there’s no predictability in the NRL, you think about what’s happening in finals football these next two weeks, we haven’t got any idea who’s going to win.
When the All Blacks play we pretty much know what’s going to happen, which is nice and fun, but we also know it’s bullshit really, that’s not real sport.
Real sport is where it’s close and hard and we don’t know what the outcome is going to be. That’s exciting and that’s the NRL.
We’re only one team out of 16 teams, so it’s statistically likely that you’ll get periods over a number of years where you’ll just lose.
But equally, if you’re at least as good as most of them, there will be periods where you get runs of winning as well, where you happen to have some of the best players, have a bit of luck and win some of those golden point games.
Now, I’m not saying we’re going to rely on that, but we have to be in the top half in being at least as good as half the teams and then we’ll get periods of five years in a row where we make the finals, that’s my pick and I think it will happen. Ultimately, we want to be like Brisbane and Melbourne, crack the atom and be in the top four all of the time.
Imagine what would happen if we did that. Look at the support we have in this country when we’re losing, imagine what it would be like when we’re winning, I want to be around then.
DL: Have you been particularly frustrated with the players this year? EW: I wanted to have my first year as chairman as one where we were successful in the top eight.
I thought we had a really good roster and two quite strong assistant coaches (Justin Morgan and Andrew Webster).
Cappy (Andrew McFadden) had got some time under the belt and experience and we had a great board. Financially we’re in good shape and I did feel quite positive.
We played pretty well in the Nines, the trial game worried me early on, we lost to the Dragons (46-10).
But the first game really shocked us all (lost 36-24 for Wests Tigers and down 28-4 at halftime), for the first half of the first game we looked like stunned mullets or something.
Then we came back a bit in the second half, but the warning signs were there. The fragility was there.
Then we lost Roger [Tuivasa-Sheck] early in the season and that didn’t help and we had to move players around.
We were running seventh with a month to go and we really had to work hard not to make the eight, we managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, so it was very frustrating.
On the other hand, when you think you’ve done enough and found out you haven’t, through failure it takes you to the next level of having to do other things.
If we’d finished sixth or seventh and had tracked that way all year, we probably wouldn’t have done a lot of the things that will ultimately prove us to be a stronger organisation.
DL: Was the incident where six players took energy drinks and prescription drugs during a night out in Auckland the lowest point during your 16-year ownership of the club? EW: It was, it was very disappointing. But I think as an organisation, we should be on top of that, we should see it before it happens and I also think that caused us to think how we as an organisation get closer to the players.
If that happened again, I’d be pretty pissed off, I’d want to know about it before it happens.
We’ve got kids out there who are under enormous pressure from the media and their families and friends.
But they’re just kids and this whole one team, one country thing is extraordinary. We miss the playoffs and all of the newspapers are talking about the Warriors and what’s going on.
That’s hard for them to cope with and we need to help them and not let it happen again.
I’m not happy with the individuals that were involved, but as an organisation we have to look inwardly at how we can avoid that happening again.
DL: You said at the beginning of the season you were looking forward to being Warriors chairman and more hands on than ever before. How did you find it? EW: I hate this losing business and it actually hurts now more than it used to.
I really don’t like losing and we’ve done a lot and it’s actually quite meaningful. We’re hitting this hard and we’ve got people coming in who aren’t used to losing.
I’m filling the place with people who don’t like losing, so hopefully we’ll stop losing.
I don’t think there’s much else we can do right now, I said to someone earlier that if we could recruit a couple more massively powerful Sam Burgess-type forwards, that would change things.
We’ve got a fantastic back line we’ve got next year and if Foran’s coming as well, with Roger and Shaun [Johnson] it would be as good as any team in the world.
But they’ve got to get the ball and we’ve got to win the forward battle and we’re not doing that.
When it really comes down to it, we’re getting hammered in the forward battle at the times when it counts.
But you can’t just go and buy these players, they’re not waiting out there for me to employ them.
So we have to develop more of our own forwards and Stephen Kearney has got a pretty good handle on that, with the way Melbourne and Brisbane have developed their forward packs.
We’ve been weak in our development, recruitment and we need to fix that.
DL: Stephen has done that in the past through the Kiwis hasn’t he? EW: I have huge respect for him. The interesting thing is that externally a lot of people are saying ‘what are you thinking? Why leave McFadden there?’
But internally, the players are thinking this is pretty cool and they respect Cappy. He’s been hammered all year, the poor bugger. This is not a kind country if you’re an Aussie coach failing us New Zealanders with a team, you have to win.
He’s the guy that said ‘I want this organisation to do well’ and in five years’ time we’ll look back at this like we do with Kearney’s time at Parramatta, where he only won a dozen games.
McFadden is a better man for this and an even better man if we now go on and get success and he’s a part of it.
But I also hope we look back at Kearney and say he’s a better coach because of that experience at Parramatta and I think we will.