Simon Mannering--Warrior by Angus Gillies

Author:Angus Gillies
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Upstart Press
Published: 2018-11-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Grand Final

In 2011, the Warriors made the Grand Final for only the second time in the club’s history. For the faithful, it had been a nine-year wait. I was still in school when the team had that awesome run in 2002. The whole of New Zealand and armies of Kiwi fans in Aussie were hit by Warriors-mania for the duration of the playoffs, and Eric Watson, the club’s owner, and Vodafone gave out thousands of free tickets.

They played the Roosters and Stacey Jones scored one of the great Grand Final tries in which he beat a number of defenders in an unbelievable individual effort. It gave the Warriors the lead momentarily in the second half, but the Roosters finished the game the stronger team and ran out 30–8 winners.

Ivan Cleary had played for the Warriors in that 2002 Grand Final. Now he was back as our coach. And he was keen to take the club to another one.

In the seasons leading up to 2011 we had been making the playoffs bar the ’09 season and the furthest we had got was the major semi which is one game away. I suppose the obvious question is: what was different about 2011?

I think what worked that year was that it was actually a carry-on from 2010. In 2009, we tried something a bit different and we had everyone put on more size, we changed our training around, but it didn’t quite work for us. Then at the start of 2010 we did a really back-to-old-school pre-season with heaps of long-distance running. The aim was to just get fitter, but we also got leaner in the process. As we came into the 2011 pre-season Walksy was saying, ‘We’re still going to do really hard training, but we won’t have to train as hard as last season because you’ve still got that base from 2010.’

I remember after playing in the Four Nations, going back to pre-season in January and usually you’re well off the pace, but I actually felt quite fit. I was thinking, ‘I’m not as far behind everyone as I usually am when I get back.’ That was good for me personally, going into the season, knowing that I was already on par with or close to the guys. And I reckon it was all down to what we had done 12 months earlier in the previous pre-season.

Our first game was against Parramatta at home, but we played it at Eden Park, which hasn’t been a happy hunting ground for us. Nevertheless over 40,000 turned out to watch and after starting poorly we came home strong but eventually ran out of time to complete the comeback, losing 24–18. The next weekend we went down to the Tigers at Leichhardt Oval 20–12, followed by a loss to St George Illawarra at home. There’s a very thin line between winning and losing in professional sport and it felt like we couldn’t quite nail it, even though physically we were in great shape.

I think during that week, after our third loss, the pressure started going on Ivan.

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