Analysis: Webster has Warriors on the Rise

Analysis - by Nick Campton, ABC Sport

Do not adjust your settings or glance out the window in case pigs are flying and hell has frozen over because the rumours are true - the Warriors are ensconced in the NRL's top four.

The Warriors are the league's surprise packet through five rounds and while it might be a little early to break out the celebratory drinks, given the hard times the club has endured it's still a cause for celebration.

This Warriors' best start to a season since 2018 and just the second time since 2003 they've claimed four victories in their first five matches.

For a team trapped in limbo over the past few seasons as they were forced to play entire seasons on foreign soil it's a remarkable revival made all the more unusual for where it began - the unlikely locale of Stamford, Connecticut.

Before new coach Andrew Webster was a two-time premiership winning assistant at Penrith and before he worked in the lower grades across the league and before he was on staff at Hull KR in England, he was the player-coach for the Connecticut Wildcats, who were once the pride of the American National Rugby League.

Back in 2005, aged just 23 with stints playing lower grades for Parramatta and a little bit of park footy mixed in, Webster headed to the land of the free and the home of the brave to link up with the Wildcats and begin his coaching life at the very end of the rugby league universe.

"It was my first year with the Wildcats, Webby was our captain-coach and I instantly felt like there was a different aura about his coaching dynamic and what he expected," said Curtis Cunz, who played under Webster at the Wildcats.

"Having someone come from overseas and instil something we'd never seen before, the way he approached the game as a coach and a player, the little nuances of the game he was able to teach us, was pretty incredible."

Life in the AMNRL could be day-to-day and hand to mouth. Matches were mainly played on high school gridiron fields between motley crews of Australian and New Zealand expats and locals, like Cunz, giving the foreign game a try.

The Wildcats were one of the league's stalwarts but clubs rise and fell by the year. The competition was mainly based around the north east, especially around New York and Delaware Country just outside of Philadelphia.

The games were rugged and raw, with little love lost between Webster's charges and the likes of Philadelphia Fight, Delaware Valley Mantarays, Washington DC Slayers, New York Knights and the Bucks County Sharks.

But the true power in those waters hailed from the curiously named Pennsylvania town of Glen Mills, where the Bulls had established a dynasty. When Webster arrived in America, the Bulls had claimed five premierships in seven years and were undoubtedly the class of the nascent competition.

With Webster leading from the front and claiming a share of the competition's player of the year honours, Connecticut went all the way to the grand final came perilously close to toppling Glen Mills and hoisting the Ferrainola Cup as the league's championships.

"It came down to the last play in the national championship. He had the ball at dummy half, I was on the wing and he cut out two players and flung it to me," Cunz said.

"It was right in my grasp, my opponent knocked it out, but the ref didn't see it.

"There was nobody in front of me, back in the day I was pretty fast and not to toot my whistle but they wouldn't have stopped me."

The 32-30 loss was Webster's swansong for the Wildcats. The following season, he joined English club Hull KR as an assistant to take another step on the long road that ended with him taking the Warriors job.

But even, 14,000 kilometres and almost 20 years away from those Connecticut days, it's possible to see the attributes that have helped the Kiwi club get off to such an unexpectedly positive start to the season.

"He instilled an attitude about that team that stayed long after he left. He only had the one season but the things he taught us stayed right until the end," Cunz said.

"He was always really calm, really concise and clear with his direction and what we needed to do. If anyone had any questions he was always there, he always knew how to talk to people, he always made sure everyone had a clear understanding of the game plan and how we'd implement it.

"Just a great guy, humble and down to earth, and he was a coach and we respected him in that way but he was always one of the guys.

"What he built there was an expectation to always be on top, an attitude that you were the best player on the field - even if you weren't, he made us believe that we were."

It might be a different standard and a different world to those long forgotten days in the USA, but there's plenty of what Cunz is describing in the Warriors so far this season.

Marcelo Montoya and Ed Kosi, unheralded wingers just a few weeks ago, are playing with a furious and fiery will to stampede everything in their path. Tohu Harris has been close to the best forward in the league and Addin Fonua-Blake hasn't been far behind.

The dynamic Jackson Ford has found a home on the left edge and hooker Wayde Egan couldn't stop scoring tries if he wanted to. Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad is proving his will to win is endless, just like it's 2019 all over again, and Shaun Johnson is smiling big and playing even bigger.

There is still much of the season to go and the Warriors faithful have been deceived into thinking a false dawn is a rising sun plenty of times before, but the early signs for Webster's reign feel real and sustainable. This might be the start of something.

Webster's success is further proof that good coaches can come from anywhere - he's one of just three current NRL coaches who never played top line football in Australia or England and, of course, he's the only who got his start among the Yanks, telling guys from Illinois and California and everywhere in-between how this game is meant to be played.

Webster never forgot his American roots - he helped out the national side on numerous tours through the years, including during the 2013 World Cup when they managed to earn a quarter-final berth against the might of the Kangaroos and he regularly checked in with the Wildcats in the years that followed.

"The two years after he left we were undefeated national champs both years, which wasn't ever done before or since," Cunz said.

"Webby was the one who started it all, he started that snowball effect, and I still have the trophy up on my mantle.

"Later, during our other championships, he'd still come back - sometimes from England, sometimes from Sydney, he'd always show up the night before the championship to support us.

"That shows the kind of person he is, always caring and staying involved and inquiring from afar as to how we were doing."

The Wildcats are extinct these days, as is the AMNRL, with club and competition casualties of the bitter in-fighting which has plagued American rugby league over the past decade but in Webster their story lives on.

"It makes me feel proud, seeing what he's doing. He's a brother, he's a friend and I can't believe that I'm a product of him," Cunz said.

"I'm just thankful to have had that opportunity, to be coached by him and play with him. It was an awesome thing."

-ABC