Revitalised Rats ready to win now according to new Warringah coach Josh Holmes
Don’t mention the word rebuild to new Warringah first grade coach Josh Holmes, or to any Hillbillies hanging around Rat Park.
After winning a colts’ first grade premiership and a colts’ club championship, and taking on the head coach role at Warringah, Holmes is confident his former side is ready to win and win now.
“We’re not trying to rebuild, we’re ready to play finals again and there’s no reason why we can’t be a really good team in 2024,” the former halfback told Rugby News.
“We don’t just want to make finals, our mindset is that we want to win the competition and we’ve got the players to do it.
“If you look at this year, they lost a lot of games by two or three points, so they weren’t a long way off. Then we’ll add some new guys to the group, alongside some young colts who will bring a lot of new energy.
“There’s no reason why we can’t be a really strong club next year.”
Holmes won a Shute Shield premiership with Warringah in 2017 and played in three straight Shute Shield grand finals through to 2019 before retiring.
He then took on the previously struggling Warringah colts program in 2022 and turned the place around completely in less than 24 months.
Now he wants to do the same with a Rats’ first grade side that finished 11th this season and won just four games.
“I can’t really judge what happened this year, I’m just focussed on what we can do with the group moving forward,” Holmes said.
“What we did with colts was challenge them to come together as a group and that’s what we’re planning to do with grade as well.
“We’re training as one big squad and we want everyone to buy in to the one common goal to be the best club in the Shute Shield.”
Alongside assistant coach and former teammate Boyd Killingworth, Holmes is expecting to unveil a new look Warringah outfit in 2024.
“We’ve had 30 colts move into grade this summer and 12 of those boys were in the first grade colts side that won the competition this year.
“From a grade perspective, we’ve retained the majority of the group from last year outside of a few players, then recruited about 30 new players.
“We’ve got Zac Barnabas back, he is a local junior. We’ve picked up Coby Miln from Randwick, Adrian Brown, and Dane Terekia from the Two Blues and Chlayton Frans and Travis Gifford from the Wildfires, Komiti Tuilagi from Eastwood just to name a few.”
Holmes believes Barnabas will be particularly important for the new look and revitalised Rats.
After playing his junior rugby at Warringah feeder club Newport and attending St Augustine’s, the gun No.7 followed his mates to play at Manly and had a breakout season in first grade this year.
The openside flanker was named Shute Shield rookie of the year and was unlucky not to win the Catchpole Medal as the competition’s most valuable player.
He finished the regular season with 39 pilfers, 20 more than anyone else in the competition and at 22, he returns to his junior club with immense upside.
“In 2023, the Rats won the least turnovers of any side so obviously it’s hard to play footy when you don’t have the ball and when you can’t turn defence into attack,” Holmes said.
“So our mindset is that we want to keep playing the attacking footy that the Rats are known for, but we also want to be better at the breakdown.
“Over the years, Warringah has had players like Lukey Reimer, Boyd (Killingworth) and Maclean Jones who all had a big impact at the breakdown so to have Zac back at the club is fantastic.
“We’ve also got his younger brother Jake coming up from colts this year as well and he’s a bloody good footballer. Plus we’ve got Ned Slack-Smith back from the Force and he’s good on the ball as well.”