Warriors show they’ve learned how to win ugly
THE Warriors’ performance against the Eels on Friday night may not have been top notch, but at least it showed the team have developed the skill of winning ugly.
The final scoreline of 24-14 flattered somewhat, thanks to a late try by Issac Luke, and for the first half the Eels did everything they could to gift the game to the Warriors.
When you’re up 12-2 after 20 minutes against a team as bad as the Eels, you really should put them out of their misery. Instead, the Warriors found themselves 14-12 down with 19 minutes to go and in danger of recording a dreadful loss.
However, the Warriors were able to lift themselves towards the end (another nod towards fitness trainer Alex Corvo) and keep themselves in third place on the ladder.
‘‘It was a tough game,’’ conceded Warriors prop Bunty Afoa.
‘‘We knew the Eels were going to come out firing and we needed to get back to our basics, which was running hard and tackling hard.
‘‘The boys came out and started well.’’
After the 32-0 loss to the Roosters last weekend, Afoa recognised the Warriors’ problem was that the forwards weren’t running up the middle and went sideways too often.
It was a focus for the Eels game and Afoa felt there was an improvement.
‘‘That was it, we knew we had to win the middle first,’’ he said. GETTY IMAGES
‘‘The Eels were always going to run hard and tackle hard, what we needed to do was grind it out, kick it down there and defend hard.’’
This game at ANZ Stadium was the closest the Warriors had come to having one of their notorious second-half meltdowns this season.
They got a second wind, but too often they had to rely on their goal-line defence and Eels handling errors to save them.
‘‘For the last six minutes of the first half, we lost a player, Isaiah Papali’i, who gets sent off and we started the second half with one man down,’’ Afoa said.
‘‘But we couldn’t use that as an excuse, we still needed to defend well, to stick to our structures that we do in training.
‘‘It was an exciting finish,’’ he added.
‘‘We fell off a little bit in the second half, especially in the first 10 minutes, but the boys came back out firing again and we were able to hang on.
‘‘The Eels were leading 14-12 and we only had 20 minutes left so we knew we had to come back strong.
‘‘We started to trust our structures again and we put them under pressure.’’
Against the Rabbitohs this Saturday, this sort of performance won’t be good enough, although they should have Roger Tuivasa-Sheck back.
Warriors coach Stephen Kearney will also have his biggest selection decision of the season so far, now that Gerard Beale is playing again. Which centre will miss out? Beale, Peta Hiku or Solomone Kata?