The COVID-based decision to settle the Warriors in Australia - including for a month at Tamworth in January - is "perfect" for their 2021 season preparation, the club's new consultant, Phil Gould, has said.
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Speaking at Warriors training at Scully Park on Wednesday, one of rugby league's most astute minds said the side's more than two-month-long camp setup ahead of round one ideally suited them.
He largely based that assessment on the club having "so many new recruits and so many young players", as well as a new coach in Nathan Brown.
"If I were a first-grade coach, and I could lock my team up for a couple of months in a camp, like this, to get ready for the season, I think it's the perfect preparation," he said.
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The Warriors arrived in Tamworth on Sunday. After a month-long preseason training stint in the Country Music Capital, they will relocate to Terrigal ahead of their opening round clash against the Titans on March 13.
Unlike last May, when the Warriors were quarantined in Tamworth, the players' families have joined them in the city this time around.
Gould, 62, a premiership-winning and Origin series-winning coach for NSW, described Scully Park as "absolutely brilliant" and the "perfect setup" for the Warriors.
He said there were "other great regional facilities" for rugby league, but "certainly none [were] better than Tamworth".
Gould joined the Warriors in August. His chief role is to provide an improved pathways program for the next generation of Kiwi rugby league stars, although Warriors chief executive Cameron George said the league guru was "willing and able to do whatever we need him to do".
But that potentially expansive role will not result in him interfering with Brown's duties, the club has stressed.
The man affectionately know as Gus said he was on "a bit of a mission of discovery" at the Warriors, "because I don't know a lot about these fellas and haven't had a lot to do with them".
"And with the international [COVID] restrictions, I haven't been able to get to New Zealand as yet," he added.
Gould plans to travel to Tamworth "a couple of days a week" while the side is encamped there.
He said Brown, 47 - a former long-serving coach of the Dragons and the Knights - possessed a "very, very good" technical knowledge of the game and would be "a great asset" for the club.
