The Warriors have confirmed assistant coach Andrew McFadden will leave the club at the end of the 2018 season to take his family back home to Canberra.
“This is ‘Cappy’s’ sixth year with us and he has given the club tremendous service,” Warriors CEO Cameron George said in a statement.
“We’d love to see him stay but he has a growing young family and it’s important to think about their future.
“We can’t say enough about what Cappy has done for the club so far and there’s plenty more ahead this year before he finishes.”
McFadden, who played 100 NRL games for Canberra, Parramatta and Melbourne from 1997-2004, cut his teeth coaching in the Raiders’ lower grades and at Catalans Dragons.
He arrived in Auckland at the end of 2012 as an assistant to Matthew Elliott, who McFadden ultimately succeeded as Warriors head coach five rounds into the 2014 NRL campaign.
McFadden was extended until the end of 2017 after just four games in charge and came desperately close to leading the Warriors to the finals in that 2014 season, missing eighth spot on for-and-against.
The Warriors sat in the top four with eight rounds left in 2015 but crumbled to lose all of their remaining games under the weight of a terrible injury toll. Another late-season fadeout when a finals spot was within the Warriors’ grasp in 2016 cost the affable McFadden the head coach job, but in an unorthodox move incoming coach Stephen Kearney kept ‘Cappy’ – a popular figure with the playing group – on as an assistant.
McFadden’s first-grade coaching record finished up at 67 games for 29 wins and 38 losses – a 43.3 percent win rate.
The Canberra-born 40-year-old is set to move his wife and three young children back to the Australian capital.
“It was important to give Cameron, Stephen and the club plenty of notice about our plans to go home,” McFadden said.
“That’s for the future. All that matters now is what’s ahead of us this season.”
Categories: Team News + Stats, WARRIORS NEWS
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