🎙 Dai Henwood on Wahs vs Dolphins - The Chat

0:00So for only the second time in NRL history, the Warriors have finished any top two after the regular season. They haven't done it since topping the table back in 2002. Did they top the table back in 2002 because it's a celery cap issue? Yeah, that was the Bulldogs one when they went over the celery cap. That's right. They're also on the playoffs for the third time in four seasons. And it all starts tomorrow against the Dollies, the Dolphins. TAB, you've got the Dollins at 245. The Warriors at $1.55. And one man who I'm sure has tickets to the game, it's 6.05. It's comedia stadium, Mount Smart tomorrow night. Die, henwood. Die, you never are excited about this. Well to be honest, I'm a little chilly at the moment. I'm just in a wealy bin at the bottom of the Southstand out in Mount Smart, just getting my early prep on. You know, just fighting for Lily World top tomorrow. But you know, the surface is looking good. It's quite july at the moment.

1:03There was a bit of rain overnight, but hopefully he's one of those rich bad bastards. Oh, good. Oh, good. How do you feel about this game? I feel like the dolphins are the team we didn't want to play, but you know, we're going to have to go through everyone at some point. How do you feel about the team? Completely. I was like, when I initially played the dolphins, what worries me is their strength is our weakness. They're like centers and wing combination, especially on their left edge, which is our right edge where Ali and Chans will be. That's where they just fire and tear teams apart. So we've struggled over the last couple of weeks that way, but also I feel we've had an eye on the finals. We haven't been playing our full team. At the moment, I'm not too stressed. I'm just thinking what an awesome year it's been. The fact that we have a really young team. So it's not like this is the end of our premiership window, but we have such a tight rivalry with these guys.

2:06Like no one's ever smashed anyone. We, you know, the stats are fine round. Our every game's been decided by four points or less over the last six. You know, we're four apiece. We're both coming in on huge winning streaks. We've won six games in a row. They've won seven. What does worry me is, now it's not actually as big a fortress as we think. We tend to struggle a bit more at Mounts Mountain terms, if we have closer wins. Whereas we tend to win when big margins when we play in Aussie. But it's just going to be fizzing out there. I think everyone should just soak it in. This is a second chance game. So if we lose, we start going sudden. Yes, but if we win, we skip a week and then we're just playing a straight pre-lam. How do you feel about the quite from the landies this week about as the boss of the NRL saying that he reckons he's 90% sure we're going to play that next game.

3:06At Eden Park. Yeah, I mean, I've been seeing all the conspiracy theories. That's why they went round with the eight ticket allocations. So Mounts Mountain sold out ridiculously quickly. I think it's a bit of an interesting one for me because we historically perform badly at Eden Park. Last time we played, there was about 2016, so none of this current squad has actually played it. Eden Park will be like going to a different ground. They won't have the prep, they won't know the changing rooms, the run out. I do think it's awesome for fans that it means that more people from around Aussie at all can actually get to the game. 50,000 people is awesome. And I mean, I live in West Auckland, so I can walk to the train station, discover the train, and not working, then get a cab to Eden Park.

4:06As opposed to having to do that to Mounts Mountain. What a lovely, what a lovely balance view that was, do I hear with that? Yeah, I was going to say, Dye, the phrase, our year gets banded about a lot. I think a lot of people think that that means we're going to win the whole thing. I don't think we are this year, but even if we don't, it's still our year, isn't it? The groundswell behind the Warriors, the way they've been playing, the record that they've had, I consider that to be our year. Look, I've been sort of trawling through Liston all this carry on. And the reason why it is our year regardless of what happens. No team has been on their fourth, fifth and sixth string hard and made it to the top two. Historically, you need to have a bound half back, which is why a lot of the Aussie media pundits are saying only the roosters and penrists can do the grand final, because they've got D.C.E and Nathan Cleary. But this is just becoming our year every year, because Andrew Webster has set up such an amazing vibe in the team.

5:14The owner has set up such an amazing club from the top down, Cameron George the CEO, Zephyr, we're just in such a lovely window at the moment that everyone should enjoy the Warriors. They're exactly how a sporting franchise should be run. I know that you go deep into some pretty weird stats and analysis during the week. Can you just share with us, I'm keen, this is a question of me that warning, but I'm quite keen to know, what's the weirdest, deepest darkest hole that you've gone into in terms of research this week? Strangely, my research has been around why all teams in our club tend to have the same defensive deficiency of having our wingers jagged. Like for instance, against the night, they had a platter extra yet still felt like they haven't overlap. And so this got me down into subscriptions for schoolboy Lee.

6:19And you know, your partner comes in and you're airplane somebody under 14 for the TV. And you keep poor thing and rewind and quite disturbing for those who don't know what you're doing. But I've been watching a lot of the younger teams, the juicy flag and I'm just, I find it very interesting and I haven't quite found the answer why our defensive structures are like that. And it seems to be people are running out in front of do spot tackles and fix the issue by themselves. I think we beat the dolphins as our back line just sticks in its defensive structure. We we didn't seem to stress the prince press conference and we hold them back. My pick is though that we're going to do what we did to our pennress a few weeks ago home where we just come out and we play so hard in the first 20 minutes and blow them off the part.

7:19I mean, I thank you so much for your time this morning. Have a beautiful weekend up the walls and joy your rugby league.