The Warriors changed my life: Payten
There is not a coach in the NRL this year whose stock has risen as dramatically as Todd Payten’s.
After starting the season as an assistant under former Warriors mentor Stephen Kearney, Payten’s work turning around the Kiwi outfit when all seemed lost saw the 2005 premiership-winning forward offered not one, but two head coaching roles.
He ultimately chose returning to Australia with North Queensland over the Warriors. But while he deserves a ton of credit for the latter’s transformation, Payten knows more than anyone that there is no chance he would be in this position if it wasn’t for the buy-in of the players.
Yet again the team defied expectations with yesterday’s courageous 26-14 loss to Canberra and, as he heads into his final week in charge, Payten paid the group perhaps the ultimate compliment.
‘‘I’m really proud of this group of men. They’ve changed my life and I owe them a whole debt of gratitude,’’ the interim coach said.
‘‘I’ll always be grateful for the opportunity they’ve given me and my family.’’
After questioning the squad’s commitment following his first game in charge against Melbourne in June, the Warriors have been a completely different team over the last two-and-a-half months.
A club rarely known for its resilience, the players have been regularly praised on both sides of the Tasman for their fighting spirit in the face of so much adversity – and it was on full display against the Raiders, despite no longer being in finals contention.
The Warriors had last year’s beaten grand finalists rattled in the first half with their physical approach to take a 14-6 lead. Had they been able to capitalise when Raiders star Jack Wighton was sent to the sinbin for repeated infringements, the final result could have been different.
Canberra coach Ricky Stuart blew up in the post-match press conference, adamant Wighton wasn’t offside. In the end, it didn’t matter as the Raiders scored two tries against the run of play while down to 12 men to take a lead they never relinquished.
The home team scored five tries in total but the fact two of them came from intercepts and two others came off botched kick defusals shows just how hard they had to work.
‘‘It hurts. I don’t think we made them earn enough of their points,’’ Payten said.
‘‘But I liked the way we started the game. We started with good control in our attack and that was something we spoke about the past couple of weeks, the starts to our games.
‘‘Then we just showed some spirit. We had some guys drop out of the game with injury, HIA (head injury assessment), players out of position. We just fought.’’
Asked what he wants to get out of his last game with the Warriors, Payten said: ‘‘Enjoyment, pride, credibility.
‘‘If we don’t show the same effort that we’ve shown for the past 10 weeks we’ll get some people saying it’s the same old Warriors. ‘‘And I want us to enjoy the last eight days that we have together,’’ he said.