Will Warbrick: The 'imposter' who belongs

On a chilly July afternoon in Melbourne Will Warbrick begins rattling off the handful of sporting moments that changed the trajectory of his life and led to him finding a home on the right wing for the Storm. 

He describes in detail the try that lifted him to the top of a 96-strong group at a Rugby Sevens talent identification tournament in 2018, and likewise the one months later which triggered a change of heart among All Blacks sevens selectors, who had previously all but written him off as a candidate to advance beyond the national development team. 

Then there were the 13 words from Craig Bellamy which convinced him to switch codes to a sport he'd hardly played before, just months after he became an Olympian and won a silver medal for his country.

"'I believe you have got what it takes to be an NRL player'," Will recalls when asked about Bellamy's message. 

"I’ll never forget it. That’s what I needed to hear."

Speaking to pan66.com as part of the Hisense Upgrade Season Series, the 26-year-old says those words and all of those little moments are essential to his story, because without them he was never destined to go anywhere in sport. 

Go back before his rapid, and somewhat unlikely, rise in rugby sevens and Will was a high school athlete who couldn't a look in with the 1st XV rugby team and at times struggled even to make the second-string side.

When he finally did get a sniff of an elite opportunity via the aforementioned Ignite7 talent competition, he was only three months away from celebrating his 21st birthday.

Even if somewhere deep down he didn't feel like the boat had yet sailed on that opportunity, he says his biggest issue was feeling like he didn't belong on the vessel in the first place. 

"Imposter is a good word for it. I was a small-town kid that saw other people and didn’t think I could live up to what they did," Will says.  

Growing up, mum says it was never about a lack of ability, she said I just never had confidence in myself.

Will Warbrick

"I think the high school sport experience damaged my confidence and my enjoyment of rugby at the time too.

"I was a late bloomer who was in the mindset that if you didn’t peak in high school then you probably never would.

"I was always an athlete growing up, always did running, but being an athlete is different to being a good sportsperson.

"There was a lack of a sense of belonging around talented sportspeople."

He switched to rugby league briefly in 2015 in the hope of finding opportunities in the 13-aside game. 

When he attended a national Māori age-group tournament swarming with talent scouts that year the only attention he attracted was from a man who told him he should try a different sport.

"There was a bloke there representing AFLNZ who said I should give it a go," Will says. 

"So I spent a season playing AFL and it ended up being the first time I got to represent my county in anything, as part of the New Zealand U18s.

"St Kilda at the time had a development pathway deal in NZ and I thought if I was good enough I could get a trial with them.

"But that never worked out for me and if I’d wanted to make it I would have needed to move to Australia, which would have been a pretty big move at the time for a kid."

While the experience had given him a reason to believe he had what it took to exist and excel in an elite sporting environment, Will stopped playing sport altogether the following year and instead focused on studying to become an engineer at university. 

However, struggles with mental health led him to return home and take up a job in mid-2016, and it was back in Kawerau – the small Māori majority settlement on New Zealand's East Coast, not far from where his England-born ancestor Abraham Warbrick landed and settled in the 1840s before marrying the daughter of a local iwi chief – that Will's journey changed course. 

A group of friends convinced him to lace up the boots again for the Te Teko Rugby Club and before long the flame was back.

"Going back to a grassroots Māori rugby team seemed to really help me enjoy sports again and with my life at the time, it gave me more purpose," he told the Hisense Upgrade Season Series.

"I was playing for enjoyment and not trying to make something out of it."

While that was his mindset, mum Carroll hadn't given up hope of her boy making it in sport and signed him up to the Ignite7 competition, in which some of the country's best athletes came to trial for a place in the New Zealand sevens development squad. 

Will begrudgingly attended, struggling to hold his own in most of the physical testing but starring in the sprint category and impressing once a ball was introduced to drills. 

He ended up being one of three male athletes picked to advance to the development camp early in 2019, and despite injury preventing him from taking part in most of the activities, he did enough in the opposed session to convince selectors he was worthy of a spot in the national squad. 

Two years later he was an Olympic silver medalist, and in an alternate universe Will would be about to go to his second Olympic Games in Paris this month with the Kiwi sevens team.

Instead, he's firing on all cylinders for a Storm side who are in pole position to claim the minor premiership and challenge for the title later this year, following an excellent debut campaign in 2023 which saw him nominated for Dally M Rookie of the Year honours. 

"If the sevens boys win a gold medal I’ll probably feel a bit like I am missing out, but I’m in a good spot now. I have no regrets," he says.

"It looks pretty good over there in Paris and it’s cold here in Melbourne right now, but I’m enjoying what I am doing.

"I am where I need to be."

While life is good now and he's a first-choice player for the Storm, initially Will feared he'd made a big mistake in moving across to league. 

"When I first got here I wasn’t amazing anyone. If anything I was humbled and it was a shock to the system," he says.  

I thought, ‘I’ve stuffed up here, I’m not cut out for league'.

Will Warbrick

"I struggled with the contact aspect, the collisions and the volume of it, and then the running forward and back 10 metres, and obviously going from a 14-minute game to an 80-minute game."

After an at-times frustrating first year with the Sunshine Coast Falcons in the Queensland Cup, the moment to become an NRL player arrived in Round 1 of 2023 and Will seized it. 

He'd go on to score 17 tries in 25 games that season and earn a spot in the New Zealand 'A' team at the end of the year. 

In keeping with the Hisense Upgrade Season theme, Will says he has plenty of people to thank at the Storm for taking his game to a new level since he arrived at the club.

"Not just Craig [Bellamy] – obviously he's the G.O.A.T – but all the players and the other coaches, no doubt they have accelerated my development in a league sense," he says.

The only reason I came to league was because it was with the Storm. I had opportunities to explore a pre-season at the Warriors and the Wests Tigers... I don’t think I would have crossed over for any other team.

Will Warbrick

"Craig was good. I got a spray here and there, but he understands when you need that and when you need some care, and Craig has a lot of care for his players. 

"I wouldn’t say he put his arm around me, he just allowed me to find my own way through it and reminded me ‘it’s not easy what you’re doing, not many have done it in terms of sevens to league.'"

Outside of helping the Storm to their first Premiership since 2020, Warbrick has eyes set on a Test debut for the Kiwis at the end of the year.

That would mark another spectacular achievement for the kid from the Rotorua Boys' High School 3rd XV, but given what he's achieved to date it would hardly be surprising.

And as for the imposter syndrome which has flanked him all the way to the NRL, that he believes is now gone for good. 

"Yeah, yeah I do belong," he says. 

"I worked my arse off to be in a position where I believe I belong at the highest level in rugby league."