SOMETIMES, the NRL coach of the year award is a very tricky one to decide.
Much of it is relative, according to what your playing roster looks like compared to others, where you are on the competition table and how much improvement your team has made from the previous season.
Plus, various circumstances have to be taken into consideration, whether it be added difficulties due to significant injuries, or suspensions, or whatever. It's not an exact science and it can be hard to work out to the majority's satisfaction.
But as the competition enters the 22nd of 27 rounds, this is shaping up to be one of the easy years.
The currently third-placed Warriors would have to be the subjects of one of the great regular-season collapses from here for Andrew Webster not to be judged coach of the year. If they were to get the staggers over the concluding rounds it wouldn't start this weekend anyway, because they have the last of their three byes.
And their draw from round 23 onwards certainly doesn't appear to be life-threatening, with games against Gold Coast Titans (away), Wests Tigers (a Tigers home game that the club has taken to Hamilton, New Zealand), Manly (home), St George Illawarra (home) and the Dolphins (away).
A Warriors team in the form it has displayed this season and without injuries suddenly becoming a major factor should be winning at least three out of those five games.
The competition table is very compact, so there's not much room for error, but the Warriors appear solid while several other teams in the top eight have genuine concerns when it comes to trying to find the sort of consistently good form that will give them confidence ahead of the play-offs.
Take fourth-placed Melbourne and eighth-placed Parramatta, which have each lost two of their last three games, and sixth-placed Cronulla, which has lost each of its last two.
And then there's South Sydney, supposed genuine premiership contenders who haven't been able to cope with the absence of star player Latrell Mitchell through injury and were just outside the top eight entering this round.
The Warriors have won six out of their last seven to put themselves in a great position with the business end of the season in sight.
And a huge amount of the credit for that has to go to Webster for the approach he has taken with the team in general and halfback Shaun Johnson in particular.
The Warriors finished 15th of 16 teams last year.
They made a couple of decent signings for this season, but lost budding superstar Reece Walsh.
And they made what has proven to be an inspired choice by appointing Webster as coach.
Webster had not been afraid to travel all over the place to learn his craft and had filled roles at various levels in the UK, US and New Zealand, as well as in Australia.
He had coached two first-grade games as an interim appointment at Wests Tigers following Jason Taylor's sacking in 2017.
Significantly, the coach who eventually took over full-time at the Tigers, Ivan Cleary, saw what Webster could do and later appointed him as one of his assistants at Penrith.
Webster was at the Panthers for their premiership wins in 2021 and last year. Doing well as an assistant obviously isn't a guarantee of success as a head coach, but Webster has made a giant leap and the key to his success is that he doesn't ask the Warriors to do any more than what they are capable of doing.
He just gets them to do it competently and at speed. It's a simple approach to playing football, but they are so well drilled it's remarkable.
They are at least as well prepared to go about their business as any other team in the NRL and better than most.
The only team they are trailing in that area would be Penrith.
But the Panthers do, after all, set the benchmark for every other teams in all of the key areas.
The player benefitting the most from the Webster approach is Johnson, who has enjoyed a rebirth as a star player at the age of 32.
Johnson won the Golden Boot as the world's best player in 2014, but it's been frustrating to see his fortunes constantly go up and down throughout his career.
He would have to wear some of the blame for that, but you've got to say that on what we've seen from him this season, under Webster, that a significant amount of the downside was likely due to his not being used in the way that best suited him.
Webster has Johnson play that simple game where he starts running to the defensive line with the ball out in front of his body and the opposition doesn't know what he's going to do.
Johnson preys on their uncertainty and at that split second when they either under-commit or over-commit, he acts.
Whether it's a short ball, a ball out the back to the deeper runner or a cut-out to a wide man, so often the defence finds itself in trouble.
A lot of the time it's not even fair because Johnson's only looking at the defence with his peripheral vision, so they can't hope to get a fix on what he's likely to do from his gaze.
And his kicking game has been sensational on top of that.Webster knows the Warriors have still got to improve a lot to become a major force.
He has said as much in recent interviews.
So that's their aim now.
He's so on the ball and the Warriors are so good to watch. They've really added something special to the competition this year.
