The Warriors’ deflated NRL season can be burst by North Queensland on Saturday but players and management are standing firm behind first-year coach Brian McClennan.

A loss to the Cowboys in Townsville will see last year’s beaten finalists shut out of playoff contention with three rounds remaining.

McClennan this week told reporters he would give his 13th-placed side a rating of just five-out-of-10 for their progress and achievements.

And former Warriors coach Tony Kemp believed McClennan would be shown the exit door next season if they under-perform to the same extent.

Warriors captain Manu Vatuvei defended McClennan despite the side’s current four-match losing streak, capped by a 41-point embarrassment against Cronulla on Sunday.

It hadn’t reduced the team’s faith in the 50-year-old, who tasted success in stints as coach of the Kiwis and then with UK Super League club Leeds.

“Bluey has the respect of everyone here,” Vatuvei told NZ Newswire.

“He has a great record and a lot of things have gone against him at times this year. It would be easy for him to lose his composure but he’s still holding it together and making sure these past games don’t affect how we play.”

Chief executive Wayne Scurrah said the Warriors were still undergoing a “mid-season review” which was more in-depth than normal. It had examined the high injury count and the team’s propensity to lose matches from winnable positions.

“Bluey would be the first to admit, we’ve not achieved the goals we set at the start of the year,” Scurrah told LiveSport radio.

“But it’s unfair to point the finger at Bluey alone. He’s part of a team.

“We haven’t talked about him stepping down and he hasn’t offered to step down.”

McClennan expected questions about his aptitude to coach in the NRL but said he wouldn’t change his methods.

“That’s part of the business,” he said. “I consider myself to be a pretty resilient character.

“I believe in my ideals and my philosophies of how football teams should function and I just need to keep working away at that.

“I don’t like where we are. This week we’ve just got to circle the wagons and fight our way out of it. An ugly win is better than a pretty loss.”

The injury-plagued Warriors are firm outsiders to beat the sixth-placed Cowboys. They haven’t won in Townsville since the grand final-reaching team of 2002 triumphed 50-20.

Vatuvei said his teammates had moved on from last week’s Sharks humbling.

“After that game the boys were pretty shattered about the scoreline,” he said.

“We just need to bring some pride back into the team.”