Warriors waste opportunities
Melbourne on Anzac Day.
It’s not that the Cowboys outplayed the Warriors. Stephen Kearney’s side dominated the first half, but blew a number of good chances and were sloppy over the second 40 minutes.
There was a lack of imagination to the Cowboys’ attack, too often it was just one pass out or in and the Warriors defence could easily close it down, yet they still came away with the win.
Without Blake Green for the second straight week, the pressure was again on Chanel HarrisTavita and Peta Hiku in the halves.
The experienced players didn’t step up in the last 20 minutes against the Rabbitohs last weekend as they blew their lead, but at the beginning of this game Issac Luke showed he was going to step up, putting in some good, long kicks from dummy half.
Lachlan Burr, who has been impressive in his early days with the Warriors, made a good break up the middle in the ninth minute and the Cowboys had to desperately scramble to keep the Warriors out after it.
They came close to scoring a couple of times after that, without coming away with any points, firstly when Hiku knocked the ball on close the line and secondly when no-one could grab a HarrisTavita bomb under the posts.
But at the midpoint of the first half the Warriors were away, with Ken Maumalo diving in on the left edge for his third try of the season as a dummy from Harris-Tavita two passes earlier sucked in the Cowboys defence.
The Warriors could have built on that lead, but instead it was the Cowboys who scored next, with Jake Clifford getting through a poor tackle attempt by Burr on the last and he then passed the ball to Coen Hess for the try.
Solomone Kata and Jazz Tevaga both made mistakes close to the Warriors’ line towards the end of the half and Adam Blair was caught offside a few metres out, which resulted in Jordan Kahu kicking a penalty to give the Cowboys a 8-4 lead at the break.
It was certainly concerning for the Warriors that they weren’t ahead on the scoreboard after being the stronger team.
But it changed, for a while at least, eight minutes into the second half when Roger TuivasaSheck scored a breathtaking try from 25m out.
He burst through a couple of tackles, then put in such a great sidestep that Te Maire Martin couldn’t even get a hand on him.
The Warriors would stuff up a couple of more try scoring opportunities on top of more errors and they paid for this when Justin O’Neill scored with 22 minutes left on the clock.
Seven minutes later, with David Fusitu’a struggling with a rib injury, the Cowboys kicked another penalty for a six-point lead.
Then in the 74th minute Michael Morgan kicked a field goal to get themselves out of reach from the Warriors and that was the queue for the 11,395 spectators to make the slow walk towards the exits.