Warriors' second-rower Adam Blair wants to be the guy his teammates can count on when they face adversity.
The off-season recruit signed for the Auckland-based NRL side from the Brisbane Broncos, having previously played for the Melbourne Storm, where he won an NRL Premiership, and Wests Tigers.
With more than 250 senior grade games, the 31-year-old brings a wealth of experience to the struggling Warriors outfit.
Blair hopes he can have an effect on his new teammates and is confident they've righted the wrongs from previous failures.
"The game's changed from the days of one-out running and trying to run over the top of teams," he said.
"Sometimes you're going to have to do that, but we want to play a different style of football where we're making people make decisions, getting some one-on-ones, making quick play-the-balls and playing down the field.
"We've obviously worked really hard in the off-season about trying to change the way we play and use the skill that we do have to go away from just bashing the ball up.
"I want to be able to use my voice and experience to hopefully give those boys the confidence to be able to push through those tough times.
"Helping with communication, being able to talk under fatigue, being able to push through adversity when times are tough, and those normally come at the back-end of games, where the score-line might be close."
Born near Whangarei, Blair played his football locally, before he was quickly snapped up by the Storm as a 16-year-old.
Looking back, the Kiwis skipper admits he was always rooting for his home team to do well and reveals they had a tougher time of it against them in the past than they would have liked.
"I'm a fan of the Warriors, obviously being from here, and I wanted them to do really well," Blair said.
"Every time I played them, I wanted to win, so I do that the best possible to make sure we win. A couple of times, we came over and we had some tough games against them, and we lost.
"We always knew they were a big squad and they worked really hard, and I guess from the outside [looking] in, you thought if you could stay with them long enough, maybe they would roll over."
The Warriors play the Gold Coast Titans on Saturday in their last pre-season hit out before their NRL opener against South Sydney on March 10.
Newshub.
