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Warriors captain Roger Tuivasa-Sheck said goodbye to his young family again on Sunday as the players departed for another season in Australia.
It is unknown how long the team will be based on the other side of Tasman for the 2021 NRL competition, but they are locked out for the first four rounds of the campaign and if they will then return home will depend on whether there is a trans. -Tasman bubble.
At the end of last season, Tuivasa-Sheck was the only player not with his family and he admitted that it was a struggle for him to be away from his wife and two young children.
But unlike last time, the Warriors captain knows when he will see his family again.
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“My family will be there in February when we move to Terrigal, on the central coast,” Tuivasa-Sheck said at Auckland airport on Sunday.
“That’s when most of the families and partners will come together.”
Unlike last year, when there was so much uncertainty about what Warriors players would have to deal with in Australia, by next season the players, staff and their families know what they are getting into.
Tony Feder / Getty Images
The Warriors will return to Terrigal for at least the first four rounds of this season.
“It’s definitely a lot easier this time, because it’s planned,” Tuivasa-Sheck said.
“The families know when they will come, we are ready, we have all set our minds where we must go.
“Some of the children will take their partners and children with them today and some of them will come later,” he added.
“My family will be joining me later in the season, so it’s much better to leave today. You are not saying goodbye to yourself and you don’t know when you will come home.
“I’ve been telling the guys, the angle that we will take this time is that it is a blessing for us to be working at a time like this, still have a job and provide.
“For families to come, it will be a trip and I tell them to take it as an adventure and enjoy it.”
For preseason training before Christmas, part of the Warriors team was based in Kiama, south of Wollongong, while the majority were in Auckland.
On Sunday night in Tamworth, the 41 players from the camp will meet for the first time.
During the past season, players were regularly praised for the sacrifices they made to keep the NRL competitive.
But that’s not how the Warriors want to be seen this year. They don’t want anyone to feel sorry for them.
“That is the attitude we are adopting,” said Tuivasa-Sheck.
“We all know what we are doing, everything is planned. We don’t go there just to do the numbers and to make everyone feel sorry for us.
“We don’t want anyone to despise us, we want to go out and earn everything.”
Early predictions by some Australian pundits see the Warriors once again fall out of the top eight this year, but that’s perhaps without taking into account the benefit the club gets from having the players all bundled together, which last season proved to be an advantage.
“Being in Auckland, you can live anywhere and travel, but when you are in a bubble, you have to get used to each other,” Tuivasa-Sheck said.
“You have to get into the habit of connecting and being together. That’s what we did at Tamworth, it was just us in that bubble, so we all connected in some way and that showed on the football field later in the season.
“Hopefully we can get it right from the start this time.”
Tuivasa-Sheck not only sees the 2021 season as one in which the Warriors can be in the top eight, but it has raised expectations even higher.
“To enter with the attitude that we are here to play, we are here to fight for the ultimate prize,” he said.
“We do not want anyone to give us any room for maneuver, we do not want anyone to belittle us, we are here to win and try to get everyone’s respect.”
