Last night's Warriors loss illustrated how incredibly difficult it is to gain and keep ascendancy in the NRL.  

The result also reaffirmed —underlined, in bold, and in italics— that the crazed notion the Warriors fan base have clung to for generations, this is our year, can only ever be applied retrospectively, i.e., that was our year. Not a question for the future, but a statement of the past.  

In the NRL, 5% off is all it takes for a team to be made to look a little ‘village’ in the wash up.   

Even the perennial great teams of the comp can get their pants pulled down in a flash, exposing their tender buttocks to the world.  

The Warriors didn't get trousered last night, nor were they embarrassed, it was an almost confused display from a team that appeared to not have a great understanding of what was happening to them on the park.   

So far this season they had done an impressive job of leaving the previous week’s result in the past —where it belongs— and focusing only on the present. The display against the Tigers though smacked of a team that had a sneaky look at the press and started believing that it was indeed their year.  

There are upsides to the limp showing of course. No-one got stretchered off or fell afoul of the judiciary. The 6-7 pairing had a game to bed in their combo, even though it looked like neither player was sure which way to roll to keep the duvet in place.   

They need to park that game, reload, and charge on.   

It wasn’t a disaster; it shouldn’t have any bearing on the season as a whole.  

Don’t ever forget, ‘our year’ should only ever be a season to look proudly back on, not a dangerous roll in a soothsayer's suit.