Warriors were mediocre at best

It seems New Zealand sport is happy to applaud mediocrity when it comes to the Warriors. How else can the supposed satisfaction of an eighth-place finish in a 16-team competition be summed up?

First off, well done to the Warriors for making the finals after an absence of seven long years.

But that’s more a reflection of how low they had sank and that goals had to be readjusted.

Making the halfway mark on the points table should be a bare minimum every year.

There were arguments that the Warriors were better than their No 8 ranking for the playoffs given that just two points separated all eight teams this year and they entered the finals with plenty of hype and hope surrounding them.

But in the end Penrith proved the Warriors were no better than their mid-table standing with a decisive win in Sydney that brought a brutal reality check for Stephen Kearney’s side.

Yes, the Warriors are exciting. But they are equally exasperating.

In many ways, the match summed up their season.

When much better beckoned they eventually failed to deliver.

Their playoff against the Panthers encapsulated everything that is good and bad about these Warriors, what makes them such a fascinating, frustrating watch.

They took an early lead, but just as quickly let the Panthers back in the match.

When it briefly hung in the balance, the Warriors were the ones who folded as the pressure mounted.

From there the Warriors hardly fired a shot. They were outdone by a clinical Penrith side who did all the basics better and at times were willing to show the Warriors what a bit of adventure and enterprise was really about.

Perhaps there had been a bit too much back-slapping by the Warriors themselves. Holding their end-of-season awards in the week leading into their overdue playoffs appearance was bemusing. Did they not believe their campaign would extend beyond the regular season?

All that said, this was a year of improvement by the Warriors, as it needed to be. And there is the promise of more from a young team that should grow from here.

Notching 15 wins from 24 games was a worthy record though there were some very poor efforts in some of the nine losses.

There remains an alarming gulf between the performance levels of the good Warriors and the bad Warriors and often the Jekyll and Hyde nature of this team can appear from week to the next.

Finding consistency in this cut-throat environment remains their challenge.

Until that is achieved they will be a mediocre team at best, battling around the middle of the championship.

They need to be acknowledged that way.