The Warriors’ hunt for more NRL players has been knocked back with coach Todd Payten laying bare how the club’s availability levels have now hit dire straits.
Payten revealed on Wednesday the club had made a play for Sydney Roosters forward Poasa Faamausili to return to the club on a two-week loan.
Faamausili spent a month with the Warriors earlier this year, however this time it had not worked out with the Roosters still battling their own injuries.
Struggling for numbers and unable to play George Jennings and Daniel Alvaro against their regular club Parramatta, the Warriors were unable to name a 21-man squad this week.
But that’s only scratching the surface of the problems for a club who are somehow above seven of their rivals on the NRL ladder.
So low are their player numbers, staff members have been injured at training in recent weeks trying to fill in.
Meanwhile sessions have been altered for the past few weeks, in a desperate bid to avoid any more injuries with just 20 players available for selection this week.
“There are limited things we can do in terms of preparation,” Payten said.
“We have scaled back training in terms of our load and distance pretty significantly.
“As far as contact we have manipulated that so they aren’t doing tackles in higher numbers more than three tackles in a row back to back.”
“Beforehand we might start at one sideline and roll across the park and they might make 15 tackles or more in an eight-on-eight scenario.
“At the moment we are going four-on-four and doing two or three tackles top.”
The Warriors have not trained in an opposed 13-on-13 session for weeks, and even then it was while using staff after four players returned home to New Zealand.
Payten said football manager Dan Floyd had since suffered two tightened achilles as well as lower back and calf complaints so can no longer fill in on edge training.
Stacey Jones and the club’s physios and strength and conditioning coaches have regularly filled in, wearing non-contact bibs.
“But it’s not ideal anyway because they kind of muck the tempo up of the game,” Payten said.
The Warriors will at least have Jennings and Alvaro back next week, and also hope to bring Jack Hetherington back from Penrith then when his ban ends.
But with those, it means Payten has his fingers crossed on no injuries at either the Eels or Panthers.
Despite all that, the Warriors remain ninth and two wins behind the eighth-placed Cronulla with four rounds to go, prompting Payten to joke that movie script writers had been in contact.
“It’s a fair story but we’ve still got a way to go to make the finals,” Payten said.
“We’ve definitely got to win this weekend and then we play Cronulla the following week and they’re the team we need to peg back.”