Whether you agree with the calls or not, pelting match officials with projectiles is never a good look.

Last night, the New Zealand Warriors played their final game of the 2026 National Rugby League season at Eden Park. A tight contest played in front of the largest rugby league crowd our country has seen, the game went the way of the Newcastle Knights, who won 12-10. After the final whistle, the game’s officials were pelted with beer cans and other projectiles when leaving the field, marring what was otherwise a special night for New Zealand rugby league.

After recording 18 wins and only six losses this season – the best the Warriors have ever done in a regular season – hopes were high for the club heading into the finals. Unfortunately, they went out in straight sets after losing two weeks ago to the Dolphins and then the Knights yesterday. It was a disappointing result for the club and its fanbase, which has grown dramatically with the team’s newfound success. Emotions were understandably high, but there is no excuse for the crowd’s behaviour and abusing the match officials. Eden Park’s chief executive has told reporters they are trying to track down those responsible for throwing the projectiles, while the NRL has launched its own investigation.

I’m a diehard Warriors supporter. I’ve long felt our team has been given the short end of the stick by the predominantly Australian NRL officials. But I was there on the sideline last night, screaming and cheering on the Warriors along with the other 49,000 in the stands. While I initially thought some refereeing decisions didn’t go our way, I’ve since watched the replays, and can understand the logic behind the decisions made by referee Ashley Klein and TMO Chris Butler in the Bunker. Had the rulings gone our way, I would’ve empathised with Knights fans who may have felt their team was robbed.

As a longtime Warriors fan, I had come to admire the attitude of head coach Andrew Webster, who seldom criticised the officiating of any Warriors games. Instead, he would often take the high road, saying the team could not let games be decided by the referees. However, following the defeat to the Dolphins two weeks ago, I noticed a subtle shift from Webster at the post-match conference. Instead of dismissing criticism of the match officials for potentially missing a sin bin offence, Webster opted to say he’d let the journalists report on it. Despite only being a small shift in tone, I took it as a sign that Webster had abandoned his “don’t leave it up to the officials” mantra. I was concerned.

Last night, after his team’s season-ending defeat, Webster took aim at the match officials. I’ve coached football teams, and I understand that as coaches, we want to stand up for our players and our team when we perceive an injustice has occurred. While he stopped short of calling for an investigation, I don’t think the criticisms made by Webster and others are justified. We lost, fair and square, to a side that played better than us. To his credit, Webster also acknowledged that “you make your own luck” and that his side was outclassed by the Knights, but with the Warriors chief executive Cameron George reportedly asking “for clarity” from the NRL over three of the referee’s decisions, I can’t help but feel we have suddenly returned to the Warriors of old, blaming forces outside of our control for our own shortcomings.

While the stats from last night’s game favoured the Warriors, we were our own worst enemy. We failed to capitalise on try-scoring opportunities, missed important tackles, made silly errors, never had any real go-forward in the middle, and executed poorly on fifth tackles. It was a far cry from how the Warriors played for most of the season.

To be fair, the last month of football had been shoddy from the Warriors. We were far from clinical against a 12-man Knights side in the penultimate round of the regular season, before barely scraping past a Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles side sitting outside the top eight and then losing both our finals games. The team has looked gassed over the last month, which comes back to the coaching and load management of players. Add to that a growing list of injuries to key players, which continued last night as our bench rotations were forcibly changed due to in-game injuries. 

Yes, we didn’t get the rub of the green on occasion, but we must accept that we were masters of our own destiny heading into the finals, and failed to deliver. Blaming the decisions of the officials is an easy out – it’s what we’ve long defaulted to as a club and fans. But if we really want to make the necessary changes needed to deliver a long-awaited maiden premiership, we instead need to acknowledge our shortcomings.

Pelting referees with cans isn’t going to win favour with NRL officials. It’s not going to change missing a key tackle, or failing to execute as required on attack at a critical juncture. All it’s going to do is make us look like sore losers who can’t accept when things don’t go our way. Where do you think the “Wahs” nickname comes from?