Its Always Sunny at Mt Smart

Why do the Warriors always turn on their veteran players? The latest saga sees Steve Price dropped as captain for vague and uncertain reasons. Now we have a host of rumours, that he has fallen out with and lost the respect of the rest of the squad, that the management want him to quit rep football but he refuses, and that he is seeking an early release to join the Broncoes on a one year deal.

Steve Price himself coming out today and denying all the rumours but again voicing openly the tension between himself and the club over the demotion and the representative football issue.

My favourite quote about the various other rumours being "There have been plenty of [other wholly untrue] things that have been much more difficult to deal with," he says. "When you hear that you're gay, you've moved out on your wife and are living with your lover, that you're a rapist ... I don't look at them as challenges but things that make you able to adapt and understand things a lot better. At the end of the day, not everything goes your way."

Why Why why do the Warriors always do this? The unceremonious dumping of ageing stars is so poorly managed. We all know these guys cannot play forever but why treat you one of your most talented players with so little respect. The rep footy issue is a problem - Price will never be available for a full season - even without rep footy his body won't deliver 26 rounds plus playoffs.

There is turmoil here behind the scenes and the Warriors need to clean house. The tone of the Price interview has him talking about guys in the squad being "weak" and "gutless" for talking about him behind his back. Who is he referring to? This is the kiss of death for team bonding.

This kind of internal dissension can destroy a team quickly so the management need to decide, do they really still want Price? If so they need to back him publicly and reprimand and punish those who are bad mouthing him or failing to support him within the squad. If they don't want Price, release him and move on. One way or the other I don't care but what I cannot stand is going into a new season with open dissension, a lack of clarity on the issue and no clear public statements from Cleary or anyone else in the management. Lets get this all out in the open now before we lose another season down the tubes.