Warriors’ new coach set to make his mark

Incoming Warriors coach Nathan Brown says he feels no additional pressure in his new role, despite the success his predecessor Todd Payten had with the side late last season.

After dropping eight of their first 11 games, they finished with an 8-12 record and it was just the third time in the past six seasons the team won at least 40 per cent of their games.

Payten’s work with the Warriors has provided a nice platform for the club to build upon for Brown, who cleared quarantine and was at the club’s headquarters in Auckland this week. Speaking to the Herald, Brown said he was ready to make his mark on the club.

“My biggest long-term goal here is for the club to become a consistent finals team.

“If we can become a consistent finals team, and do that long enough and well enough, that’s when you generally get to the promised land of winning a Grand Final.

“At the end of the day, we’re all in the business for the same reasons – we want to win.

“But to do that you have to get certain things right along the way and you’ve certainly got some building blocks on the way. To be a Grand Final team, playing finals consistently is something you need to do.”

Brown isn’t a totally new entity to the Warriors environment, having worked with the club early last season in a consulting role. There will, however, be a number of players who are yet to work with the New South Wales native after the club’s recent signing spree, which saw them land the likes of damaging forwards Addin Fonua-Blake and Ben MurdochMasila, and veteran backs Euan Aitken and Marcelo Montoya.

However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Warriors have been forced to set up bases in both New Zealand and Australia for players to do preseason work at, meaning Brown won’t get a good gauge of his full squad until early next year.

Brown praised the club’s planning both in that aspect and in how to approach the player market, in which they have had some rare success.

“I was quite aware they had a plan in place, and any time someone’s got a plan in place, they give themselves a reasonable plan of doing okay in the recruitment market,” he said.

“Recruitment at the end of the day is the lifeline of any coach. All the old, great coaches like Jack Gibson and Wayne Bennett have always said the best recruiters are the ones that generally win some footy games, so hopefully we got that right.”