The New Zealand Warriors women’s side will open their 2026 NRLW season against the Canterbury Bulldogs in Hamilton on Sunday, with as many as six players in line to make their club debuts in the black and white jersey.
It is the second season back for the Warriors women after the club returned to the competition last year, having spent four seasons on the sidelines following the disruption of the Covid years. They finished their comeback campaign with a record of four wins and seven losses, a respectable return for a team that had to rebuild almost from scratch, and they head into the new season with a squad that looks a good deal stronger on paper.
Much of that strength comes from a recruitment drive that landed three players from the Brisbane Broncos outfit that won last year’s premiership. Gayle Broughton, Mele Hufanga and Netta Nuuausala all crossed the Tasman to join the Auckland club, bringing championship experience into a dressing room that did not have a lot of it. They were joined by one of the biggest names in New Zealand women’s sport, former Black Ferns Sevens star Stacey Waaka, who has switched codes to give rugby league another crack.
Coach Ron Griffiths, who has guided the side through its return, said the conversations he had with the new recruits were never really about the football. “When I spoke with them, it was never about the rugby league,” Griffiths told RNZ. “It was always about wanting the opportunity to come home.” For a club that markets itself on its place in New Zealand sport, that pull of home has become a genuine recruiting tool, giving players who have spent years in Australian competitions a reason to come back across the ditch.
Waaka is the headline arrival, even if she will not start the opener. Having only linked up with the team this month after finishing her commitments elsewhere, she begins the season on the extended reserves while she gets up to speed. The decision to come back to league was an easy one, she said. “I couldn’t say no, this was a no-brainer,” Waaka told RNZ. “The Warriors, the only team here in New Zealand, would be an absolute dream.” She also reflected on a long-standing pact with team-mates to one day pull on the jersey together. “It’s funny, I remember we all said that we’d come back to the Wahs,” she said, using the nickname supporters have given the club.
Griffiths sees Waaka’s value as much in how she carries herself as in what she does with the ball. “I think she brings a sense of leadership in how she prepares,” he said. For a young squad with plenty of newcomers, a player who has won at the very top of women’s sport setting the standard at training is worth as much as another set of fresh legs on the field.
The team’s plans took a knock with the news that Hufanga, one of those Broncos arrivals, is expected to miss the first four games of the season with a hamstring injury. It is a frustrating start for a player the Warriors had earmarked as a key attacking weapon, and it leaves a hole the coaching staff will have to cover early. Broughton, another of the Brisbane trio, will line up at five-eighth and is expected to be one of the side’s main creative forces while Hufanga recovers.
Around those established names sit the debutants, the players who could run out for the club for the first time on Sunday. Their inclusion points to the work the Warriors have put into building depth and a local pathway, rather than leaning entirely on imports. Mixing seasoned campaigners with players getting their first taste of the competition is a balancing act, but it is the kind of squad-building a club needs if it wants to be competitive over a long campaign rather than a few good weeks.
There is history between these two sides as well. The Warriors got the better of Canterbury last August, running out winners by 34 points to 6 in a comprehensive display. That result will give the home side confidence, although a new season brings new variables and the Bulldogs will have done their own work over the off-season. A season opener tends to be a scrappy affair as teams shake off the rust and combinations bed in, so the Warriors will be wary of reading too much into one past scoreline.
Playing the opener in Hamilton is part of the club’s effort to take the women’s game beyond Auckland and build a following across the wider region. Taking matches on the road gives fans outside the main centre a chance to see top-level women’s rugby league in person, and it spreads the team’s footprint at a time when the NRLW is trying to grow its audience on both sides of the Tasman. The competition has expanded steadily in recent years, and a strong New Zealand side is good for the game as a whole.
For the Warriors, the goal this season is to take a clear step forward from that four-win debut campaign. The pieces appear to be in place, with championship experience, a marquee code-switcher and a crop of emerging players all pulling on the same jersey. Whether that translates into wins will start to become clear on Sunday, when the new-look side runs out in front of a Waikato crowd to get their season under way. You can read more on the squad and the build-up in RNZ’s coverage of the opener.
Will you be watching the Warriors women this season, and who are you most looking forward to seeing in action? Let us know in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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