In trawling through some statistics from a challenging 2024 season, a record has emerged which spells out the frustration of the One New Zealand Warriors' might-have-been campaign.
It’s all to do with the near misses, not solely the number of them but also the comparison with other clubs this season and benchmarked against the Warriors’ history.
Stats buffs are fully aware the Warriors had an exceptional number of close reverses with seven matches lost by six points or less plus a draw.
Running through them chronologically, there were four-point losses in the opening two rounds to the Sharks (12-16) and the Storm (26-30), the 22-22 draw with the Sea Eagles in round six, a three-point defeat by the Titans (24-27) on Anzac Day, a six-point losing margin against the Knights (8-14) the following round, the one-point setback against the Bulldogs (12-13) in round 18 and then two-point losses to the Raiders (18-20) in round 20 and the Dolphins (32-34) in golden point in round 23.
It's the cruellest series of results, never mind delving into the circumstances in terms of decisions, key moments and the like.
Put another way, a possible 15 points were missed by the barest margins or by a converted try or less. The if word comes in here, but if just three of the losses had fallen the other way the Warriors would have had enough points to make the finals the way it played out.
Fact is no other club had eight games that fell into the six-points-or-less category either this season or last.
It’s no consolation but to emphasise the gravity of what happened, in their previous 29 regular seasons the Warriors had never had so many adverse outcomes in that range. No wonder there was such an acute level of frustration.
It’s also instructive analysing the final table which, in bald terms, showed the Warriors finishing 13th on 25 points.
Then take a look at the points for and against. Their points conceded (574) was the ninth best and their points differential of -62 was the 10th best (which the 6-66 loss to the Titans accounted for).
Among the individual statistics, no player appeared in all 24 matches, Mitchell Barnett and Addin Fonua-Blake the best with 23 followed by Dallin Watene-Zelezniak played 22 while a total of 31 players used.
For the third season on end, Watene-Zelezniak was the top try-scorer with 15, boosting his total for the Warriors to 52 in 69 appearances.
In his farewell campaign, Shaun Johnson was the top points-scorer for the eighth time in his Warriors career. With 78 points he boosted his club record to 1213 in a season in which he moved past the great Stacey Jones as the Warriors’ second highest try scorer with 79, well behind Manu Vatuvei’s record of 152.
