NZ Warriors legend Stacey Jones admits he's never aspired to be an NRL head coach, but will do his best in an interim role to right the club that launched his rugby career.
Jones, 46, has stepped into the Warriors leadership, after predecessor Nathan Brown dramatically left on Tuesday, citing a reluctance to relocate to New Zealand next year, when the club returns from its three-year COVID-19 exile across the Tasman.
Brown leaves a team on a five-game losing streak, mired near the foot of the competition table with four wins and nine losses. Jones must now stop the rot, with playoff contenders Cronulla Sharks (7-5) looming on Sunday.
But neither he nor Warriors chief executive Cameron George have made any commitments to him retaining the job past this season.
"It all happened really quickly and it's not an ideal situation," Jones said. "[Owner Mark Robinson] and Cam came to me last night, and said this could be happening... would you be available to take over?
"I said I'd do it - it's not an ideal situation for me or the team that we're in this position, but I accepted the role.
"It's the interim role for now and the club has been open about looking for the right person to take over. Whoever that person may be, they'll do their due diligence and I understand that.
"I've always wanted to coach, whether as an assistant coach, or U20s or reserve grade. I've certainly never had massive aspirations to be an NRL coach and it's come in this situation, which is not ideal, but I'll give it my best shot."
No-one understands the club culture and history better than Jones, who debuted for the Warriors as a teenager in their inaugural season, helping them to the 2002 Grand Final and amassing 261 appearances over 12 seasons.
In his first season as Junior Warriors coach in 2014, the club won the NRL U20 competition.
He's a member of the NZ Sports Hall of Fame and the NRL Hall of Fame. His appointment comes with instant credibility and he's clear on what needs to change immediately to turn his team around.
"We certainly have to make some changes, whether they be positional changes, but right now, the group need to be stable," said Jones. "What's been evident the last month is our resilience, our effort, our steel is not there and that's a part of the game we have to sort out, before we sort anything else out.
"My message to the group is we need to get the simple things right first - our effort is way off the mark and we need to fix up small areas of our game to be better. We can't fix hundreds of things, but we can fix a couple of things that will make us a much better side."
George insists he has already had phone calls and messages from agents and coaches, inquiring about the fulltime role. As the Warriors regroup from Brown's departure, Wests Tigers have also parted company with NZ Kiwis coach Michael Maguire, while several other former head coaches are already on the open market.
Successful Tonga coach Kristian Woolf is another name pitched to George, who denies he was among those on his call list.
"We're not scared of a newbie," said George. "There's plenty of tremendous assistant coaches around the game that are learning in very good systems and have very good connections with players.
"To be honest, I want to see someone with a bit of a hard edge to them, a bit of a hard arse. We need to steal up our defence, we need to steel up our attitudes right across the board.
"I Just like the simple approach to footy. If someone comes to us not over-analysing it and has a very simple philosophy with effort-based areas really strong, they're really key attributes that could help our club with the playing roster we have coming."
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