Welcome to This Warriors Life’s website, version 2.0 - fresh, clean and ad-free on Substack.
Firstly, thanks to all of TWL’s readers since rugby league geek Will launched the website in 2018, and our listeners since the irreverent Brad jumped onboard in 2019 to kick off what was (still is?) a patchy little podcast, later galvanised by Fonzie’s analytical expertise.
We’re constantly baffled and humbled by your kind words, loyalty, generosity and that our content is a part of your week every season.
Particular gratitude from the bottom of our hearts goes to our Patreon supporters over the years. You’ve essentially done it out of the goodness of your hearts, without getting anything extra for your contribution (which has always made us feel slightly uncomfortable) - which is a big part of the motivation for shifting TWL over to Substack’s platform.
As well as providing a much cleaner, user-friendly (for us and you) site free of all the ads and pop-ups that had turned the previous website into a bit of an ungainly mess, we want to provide more value to the folk who are able to chip in a bit of cash for what we do.
The main podcast episode each week (likely ‘That’s My Team’ LIVE on Tuesdays and Fonzie’s in-depth episodes) and the Kingz Container Crew Warriors Player Ratings - which Will has provided for the Warriors’ past 193 NRL matches - will remain free for all (which is pretty much the only content we were putting out in recent seasons). You’re going home with that whether you are able to sling us something or not.
We’ll also have a paid subscriber option, which will provide access to a whole bunch of regular content we’ll be pumping out: extra podcast episodes/live videos and interviews, more preview, review, stats and history-based articles, and opinion pieces. There will also be subscriber chats and lots more opportunity to interact with us and the TWL community.
Perhaps most exciting for the real Warriors buffs out there, Will’s Warriors 25: Celebrating 25 Years of the New Zealand Warriors book - sold out everywhere and out of print - has been fully digitised, updated and loaded up onto the TWL Substack, ready for paid subscribers to pore over. It looks great and features loads of embedded video and the like that obviously you can’t get in the hard-copy edition.
Will will also be dropping new chapters (the 2020 season onwards) over the coming months. The 1995 season chapter is free for all subscribers as a taster of what’s available.
Paid subscriptions will be NZD$7.50/month or NZD$75/year, with a 20% launch discount offer (so $6/month and $60/year). For our Patreons, that’ll be a bit less than you send our way currently; for others, a little bit more. But the key for us is providing value for those who want to get behind us.
There’s also a founding member - This Warriors Lifers - offer at NZD$200 for those that are keen and able to throw a bit more support behind us, and you’ll get some limited edition, personalised merch for your generosity.
That’s enough from me for now, but any questions, thoughts or suggestions, please fire away in the chat here after you’ve subscribed, or get in touch on TWL’s socials or at will@thiswarriorslife.com. We’ll keep you updated in the meantime.
Cheers
Will Evans and Brad Larking
This is gonna be awesome! 🍻
Yeah the boys!