Analysis: The Warriors have tapped into something special - a sense of belonging. Rugby union should take note, writes Scotty Stevenson.
It wasn’t the result that resonated in the Auckland drizzle on Saturday night, even though a fightback draw against the Sea Eagles is proof enough that the Andrew Webster Warriors are masters of a destiny at odds with the club’s history.
It wasn’t the hiss of electricity whenever Roger Tuivasa-Sheck touched the ball. It wasn’t the endless run metres of Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad, or the methodically brutal graft of Mitchell Barnett. It wasn’t the thrill of a golden point shoot-out or the battle of halfback initials between S and J, and D and C and E.
At another point in time, on a different night in a parallel universe, it could have been some or all of the above, but plugging into that match, and juicing up on a Warriors home game on a soggy Saturday night carried with it something more than simply 80 (or 90) minutes of sporting spectacle.
When you get on the Warriors, you feel something that rugby league’s rival oval ball code has largely forgotten. You feel a genuine sense of belonging.
You only have to look at the patrons packed into Mount Smart to understand the true value rugby league places on being part of a club. Rugby League gets it, in a way rugby union, in this country at least, seemingly can’t get its head around. Saturday night at Mount Smart felt like the hottest ticket in sport, a match you couldn’t possibly miss. Saturday night at the Cake Tin most certainly did not.
All of that is not to compare the on-field action. The Hurricanes and the Chiefs put on the sort of Super Rugby show that lived up to all billings, a soda pop footy extravaganza featuring some of the more effervescent talents in the game (Asafo Aumua alone worth the price of admission).
But they played to a semi circle of fans in a round arena while the Warriors rose from the dead in a bubbling cauldron of fanatics. Two regular season games, two marquee match ups, two completely different atmospheres.
A sense of belonging. It is fundamental to us all. We seek friends who share our tastes and passions, the safety in numbers and the stories around the campfires. There are codes who have tapped into this basic desire, and codes who have erroneously concluded that a fan is merely a television subscription, a ticket stub and a jersey purchase.
Fans are these things but can’t be only these things. Cultivating some deeper connection should be at the heart of any sports marketer. The Warriors appear to have cracked the code in this country, or at least filled the void.
Almost a decade ago, the AFL rolled into Wellington with St Kilda and Sydney to play an Anzac Day game.
If ever a code understood the power of cradle to grave connection it is the AFL. I spent that weekend chatting with Gil McLachlan, then deputy CEO of the AFL and today the big kahuna.
He shared the sport’s vision, its strengths, its vulnerabilities and its long-term strategy to retain its position as the most successful football code in Australia. By the end of our time together, I had one singular thought: the AFL wants to eat your children.
As one esteemed colleague once quipped, “you have to remember the AFL began its life as little more than a suburban club competition, akin to Mt Eden playing Devonport.” Exactly.
It began life as a club rivalry and remains a club rivalry. In this way, AFL fans begin their life as a club devotee, and remain that way until they draw their last vital breath. And they don’t just follow a club, they belong to one. Think stories about the Warriors looking to buy a pub sound strange? Hey, every club needs a club house.
The AFL and NRL are different games, but the club formula is the same.
That is why both sports continue to resonate at a pitch well above that of rugby union.
What club exactly can one belong to in rugby?
The Super Rugby teams have only recently (and retroactively) labelled themselves ‘clubs’, and it remains patently unclear what membership looks like.
The provincial teams were once representative of geographical allegiance, but the provincial clubs have been carved out and bypassed as feeder teams in favour of a select cabal of professionally styled school teams collectively supplying raw bulk ingredients to semi-professional teams that could hardly be accused of being reflective of local development.
The clubs are dying, the rep teams are not clubs, and the super teams are clubs largely because that’s what they call themselves.
Confused? Join the club. Oh, that’s right…
The Warriors, now that’s a club. It’s not a club with a full trophy cabinet, or a legacy of on-field success, but it’s jam-packed with day ones and it’s taking new members weekly.
The latest fan faction is the aptly named “Pinot Wahs”, comprised entirely of Bougie aficionados sitting at home watching the team play while imbibing a glass or two of Central Otago’s best. Well, hand me a straw and let me in.
In its fostering of a symbiotic relationship with its fans (Up The Wahs) and its members the Warriors remind us that in this big money ecosystem of image rights and broadcast deals, the twin pillars of any professional sport, there is no substitute for making people feel like they are part of the story and part of the team.
There is no substitute for making feel like they belong.
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