Warriors assistant coach Richard Agar coached at Leeds until early 2022, overlapping with Morgan Gannon from when he debuted there in 2021.<\/p>\n
Morgan Gannon played 60 games for Leeds after debuting in 2021. Photo \/ Photosport<\/p>\n
Gannon racked up 60 games for the Rhinos and has had conversations with Webster and recruitment manager Andrew McFadden over the last year.<\/p>\n
Webster and McFadden even had a separate Zoom call with his parents and partner to discuss the potential shift.<\/p>\n
Gannon said those relationships played a key role in his decision to leave his home.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just something that I thought, a challenge that might not come up too often and an opportunity that I couldn\u2019t turn down. Really glad that I\u2019ve taken it and no regrets with that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a few family links and connections. There were people that we trusted, and that was a big part in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gannon is primarily a lock and second-row hybrid, but he even has some experience in the halves.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I\u2019m playing lock, I\u2019d be a bit of a ball player, still like a runner first, but I did a bit of like six as well, a couple of years ago. So I\u2019ve got that ball-playing style. And then as a back-rower, I like to hit a strong line and defend pretty physically.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old will have his work cut out to get NRL game time in the back row. He will be competing with Dally M lock Erin Clark, Kurt Capewell, Leka Halasima, Marata Niukore, Demitric Vaimauga and Jacob Laban for minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got on with Capewell quite well, and he\u2019s sort of taken me under his wing a bit with some of the learnings off him. I\u2019ve been doing a bit of lock as well, so I\u2019ve been trying to pick Mitch Barnett and some of the middles\u2019 brains about how to play that 13.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morgan Gannon has signed with the New Zealand Warriors on a three-year deal. Photo \/ Photosport<\/p>\n
Gannon adds another flavour to the Warriors\u2019 melting pot of youth. Halasima is 20, Vaimauga 21, Laban 21, Ali Leiataua 23, Eddie Ieremia-Toeava 21 and Tanner Stowers-Smith 21.<\/p>\n
The Englishman has been impressed by the pedigree of the young guns.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt shocked me getting here how mature they all are. They all seem like they\u2019re 25, 26, but they\u2019re mature beyond their years. That was one of the big pulls of coming here as well, that Webby said how exciting the young crew is coming through, and it\u2019s been good seeing that live in action in training \u2013 the energy that they bring and the enthusiasm as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gannon said he has had a couple of \u201cwelcome to the NRL\u201d moments so far in pre-season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were doing some slide D [defence], and Demitric just ran straight at me and knocked me on my arse. So that was a \u201cwhoa\u201d, like yeah, they run pretty hard over here, so that was a good wake-up. It\u2019s been good just how physically and how competitively we train. I feel like I\u2019ll be prepared for that going into the season.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old expects the NRL to be faster than the Super League, and noted the pre-season is much longer.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack in Super League, you\u2019d probably do six or eight weeks of pre-season, and then you\u2019d be into games. So this one now, doing 14 to 16 weeks of pre-season, I can feel that in myself, in my body, how much more preparation you get for the season coming.<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely feel like the speed of it\u2019s going to be a new thing, something that I\u2019ve felt in the arm wrestles that we\u2019ve done so far, but it\u2019ll take some getting used to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gannon said he is creating his own style, but takes inspiration from another Englishman who dominated the NRL.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone I looked up to when I was growing up was Sam Burgess, and how he came over to the NRL and his playing style. But at the minute, just picking up good traits from a fair few players.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Leeds local admits the difference in accents has created somewhat of a language barrier.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes they can\u2019t understand me, so I have to put an Aussie twist or something like that so it gets across to them. Some of the stronger accents and stuff, it does sound like a different language sometimes, but I\u2019m getting used to it now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nathan Limm<\/a> has been a journalist with Newstalk ZB and the NZ Herald since 2020. He covered the Netball World Cup in Cape Town in 2023, hosts The Big League Podcast<\/a> and commentates rugby and netball for Gold Sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warriors assistant coach Richard Agar coached at Leeds until early 2022, overlapping with Morgan Gannon from when he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[118736,96611,64,22065,63,38532,580,230251,14650,65816,2351,46332,29602,12766,36436,12536,55094,230253,761,762,158,230256,219115,230255,230254,213923,39892,85,8293,230252,3198,28131,16363,3605,141837,3205],"class_list":["post-443275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-accent","tag-armed","tag-au","tag-auckland","tag-australia","tag-faith","tag-for","tag-gannon","tag-leap","tag-leeds","tag-left","tag-like","tag-links","tag-makes","tag-might","tag-more","tag-morgan","tag-myriad","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-passage","tag-rhinos","tag-rite","tag-seem","tag-shift","tag-signing","tag-sports","tag-than","tag-thick","tag-warriors","tag-west","tag-why","tag-with","tag-yorkshire","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}