Warriors toast rare win on the road
STOP the world, the Warriors have won away from Mt Smart Stadium, defeating the Titans 34-12 on the Gold Coast.
It may have come at a hefty cost with Kieran Foran picking up a quad injury, but for the beleaguered Auckland-based club this was two well earned points.
It had been 306 days since they last won away from home, which was coincidently against the Titans on August 7, 2016.
And what a win this was. They played unshackled footy, seemingly free from the pressure they’d been under as they failed to deliver over the first half of the season.
Towards the end of the first half they had arguably one of their best patches of this campaign, showing just what this team is capable of when things click.
But for the second week in a row they conceded the first try as in the fifth minute Kane Elgey scored the opener for the Titans on the left edge with the fiveeighth taking a nice offload from Dale Copley to put him into space, although he still had plenty of work to do to score.
But four minutes later Ryan Hoffman scored in his 300th NRL game, benefiting from a good delayed pass from Shaun Johnson, who took the ball to the line before finding the second rower.
In the 23rd minute David Fusitu’a almost scored when trying to pluck a bomb from Johnson.
Although he didn’t gather the ball cleanly the first time, he came close to doing this the second time, but knocked it on.
Ben Matulino came off the field two minutes later for a concussion test after looking a bit groggy following a knock to the head. However, he did return in the second half.
Just before the half hour mark, Johnson was the provider for the Warriors’ second try, pushing the ball out wide to Blake Ayshford, who strolled over untouched.
Just over a minute later Ken Maumalo scored on the other wing, taking a short, crisp pass from Foran.
The Warriors weren’t done scoring for the half as Roger Tuivasa-Sheck took the ball from Bodene Thompson and ran in from 30m out to pretty much seal the game already.
Up 24-4 at the break, surely there couldn’t be another repeat of Panthers fiasco a month ago.
Well, when Jarryd Hayne ran through the Warriors’ defence all too easily in the 45th minute no doubt there would have been concerns from their fans.
Foran saved a try with a stunning tackle on Elgey five minutes later, but in the 64th minute he was taken from the field with an ankle injury.
His leg was twisted as Ryan James fell on him and looked to be in a great deal of pain. Afterwards though, Foran said he didn’t think the injury was bad and hoped to be back for the game against the Bulldogs in a fortnight.
The Warriors were able to