Voss calls for Warriors players to take accountability for inexplicable 2024 bust

Let go of those faint glimmers of hope, Warriors fans. The team's NRL Finals chances are dead and buried, and deservedly so.

That's the opinion of veteran rugby league broadcaster Andrew Voss, who is as perplexed as the Warriors faithful, who are wondering how the team's train has derailed so spectacularly after last season's resurgence.

Friday's limp display against the lowly Parramatta Eels was the latest example of the side's ineptitude this year, where the scoreboard failed to tell the whole story of how legitimately outplayed they'd been by a team riding a six-game losing streak and without their best player.

"I thought it was awful," Voss told SENZ Mornings, assessing the side's abysmal 30-20 defeat at Mt Smart.

"If ever a scoreline flattered a side, it was the fact that the Warriors ended up putting 20 on the board. Those three late tries… two of those came while the Eels only had 12 men.

"The Warriors deserved a shellacking and, this hurts to say because I want year-on-year sustained success for the Warriors - but the Warriors don't deserve to play finals football this year. And now they're not."

While there is a mathematical possibility the Warriors could still make the top eight, it would take a minor miracle of sorts. They'd need to win all four of their final games - three of which will be played away - bank their two points for the bye, then rely on a whole slew of other results going their way.

Voss cites their inexplicable and ongoing struggles to put points on the board that have plagued them since the start of their campaign as the chief cause of their downfall.

But as far as he can see, that's only the starting point, insisting there's no easy fix for coach Andrew Webster.

"It's happened so many times during the season and it is a real flaw with the team," Voss noted.

"I don't know what that is. How can you start a game so well? Dominate your running metre, your completion rate, do all those key things right, have really good attacking players, but don't convert it to points?

"Last year was such a breakthrough. Have they gone back five steps, six steps, ten steps? It feels like there's a lot of work to be done.

"There's still a month of the competition to go, and you hope they finish strongly.

"But then the off season, it really is back to the drawing board. That's the way it feels."

While the inevitable finger pointing at coach Andrew Webster has already begun to rear its head, Voss believes the players need to take stock of their own individual performances with some wholesale accountability across the board.

"Andrew Webster has impressed me at every occasion that I've had a chance to speak with him and, watching from afar, his manner around the team performance, both good and bad, has impressed me no end," he said.

"But if the season stopped right now, is there any player who could look in the mirror and say, I have played better this year than last? I'm throwing everyone in there.

"Crickets. I don't think anyone has."

Listen to the full interview below: