Bang a Gong — finals ride back on
Warriors fans, strap yourselves in. The roller-coaster ride towards the NRL finals is back on, with a remarkable high in the Gong yesterday after a month of mostly low points.
This 18-12 win over the Dragons in Wollongong was the most important victory of the season so far.
From here there is a platform to launch — the momentum, belief and confidence will all come back.
If the Warriors had lost this game, which had looked the most likely result for much of the second half, who knows who could have happened in the rest of the campaign?
The doubts, the worries, the old voices in the back of the head might start to re-emerge, and the Knights this Friday would suddenly be a tough proposition.
But now — and it’s a fine line — the Auckland club should be back on track.
In the space of 30 second half minutes yesterday, the Warriors rediscovered the verve, the energy and the spirit that had characterised the first half of the season.
And it was done in the most unlikely of venues, an seemingly haunted ground on the south coast of Sydney where the Warriors’ victory song hadn’t been heard since 1996, when Jacinda Ardern was a student at Morrinsville College, Steve Hansen was in his first year of coaching and Bill Clinton was president of the United States.
As much as the Warriors’ shouldn’t have invited the Dragons back into the match after halftime — a couple of David Fusitu’a errors and a drop in energy from the rest of the team allowed the Dragons to score 12 points in five minutes — it was the response after that that caught the eye.
Most Warriors teams of the past would have caved, but this one didn’t.
Their defence was brutal, desperate and decisive. Sure, the Dragons aren’t quite the team they were in March and April, but they had the wind in their sails, while the Warriors were reeling, and didn’t get a penalty until the 37th minute of the half. They even suffered a cruel reversal late in the match, when a Dragons error blown by one referee was changed to interference in the ruck by the other.
But the Warriors kept going. Minds stayed focused, and the tackling stayed willing. It’s the kind of win the players savour the most. It’s also the kind of victory that has defined the Warriors, who delight in performing against expectation and doing things the hard way.
Roger Tuivasa-Sheck was exceptional, with try-saving tackles, slashing runs, great positional play and an energy that kept his teammates on task. Almost the whole squad emerged with credit.
Hang on — there are a lot more twists and turns to come from the Warriors in the 2018 NRL season.