Warriors must heal rifts

It will be some time before the club can move on – and you get the strong feeling the full story is yet to come out.

THE Warriors are a club in chaos. The repercussions from the Warriors’ big night out in Auckland after their Anzac Day thrashing in Melbourne – belted 42-0 – continue to be felt.

It will be some time before the club and everyone involved can move on.

The team’s stuttering season is on a knife edge and only an improbable win against the Broncos next weekend seems capable of somehow injecting confidence back into the club and getting the team back on track.

While desperate to promote unity to their disappointed fan base, the team will have to work hard to contain frictions within the player ranks.

Behind the scenes, some teammates are at odds with each other over how the recent issues have been dealt with.

It is understood the hard line taken by coach Andrew McFadden and captain Ryan Hoffman, most particularly toward some of the young players, is not going down well.

But despite all the revelations and confessions since that appalling lack of judgment by six fully contracted players to head out on the town on April 26 and fill themselves up with energy drinks and the pain-killing drug Tramadol, you get the strong feeling the full story is yet to come out.

It seems the Silly Six, or whatever you want to call them – Manu Vatuvei, Ben Matulino, Bodene Thompson, Sam Lisone, Albert Vete and Konrad Hurrell – even allowing for Hurrell’s claim that he abstained from the pillpopping, had company on their night out in the shape of a former caused further friction inside the team, with others not happy that he dobbed in team-mates.

The night out continues to have consequences. Vatuvei was granted leave on medical grounds when the behaviour of he and his team-mates made international headlines.

His decision to ‘‘come clean’’ yesterday – and to confirm that after having considered quitting, he was staying – appeared to me to be carefully rehearsed and managed by the Warriors media team.

Relations have soured inside the group of six. After initially agreeing to tell a uniform story to club management after being potted by the team-mate, one of the players told a different tale, fearing the incident might spell the end of his career. This has split the group. It is also understood some of the players have found it tough to deal with McFadden’s style of leadership and that a group of the Pacific Island players have found Hoffman’s very direct Aussie manner difficult to handle.

There must have been many times recently when Hoffman and other stars who quit lucrative contracts with Australian-based NRL clubs worried that their league careers had taken a U-turn because of the issues within the Warriors.

During this week a group of senior players met behind closed doors – they stopped short of calling it a crisis meeting. But it didn’t stop the rot.

Straight afterward an arranged interview between Roger TuivasaSheck and a media organisation, again hand-picked by the club, didn’t help matters. Tuivasa-Sheck proceeded to reveal what was discussed at the meeting despite some players believing the discussions should remain confidential.

Long-suffering Warriors fans deserve the full truth so the club – players, coaches, staff and most importantly those paying at the gate – can wipe the slate clean and start cheering again.

It’s not even winter and this season is far from over.

As of the start of this shortened round 12, the Warriors were just two points off the top eight.

So close, but in many respects so far away.