Licence to thrill staggers Broncos

They had a week to think about their season and that makes a huge difference.

Warriors coach Andrew McFadden gave the players a licence to thrill against the Broncos yesterday, and they rewarded him with a superb 36-18 win.

They had been a club under siege the past two weeks after their embarrassing 38-12 loss to the Raiders.

But they looked a different side, scoring seven tries to three against last year’s NRL Grand Finalists and McFadden said he wanted his players to play with smiles on their faces as he let them off the leash.

‘‘There’s no doubt about it,’’ McFadden said after the game.

‘‘It’s all part of it as a coach, understand the group.

‘‘I was quite reactive after the Canberra game and the disappointment has been there for a while, but when I looked closely at the performance the group was trying, they just needed a bit more confidence, a bit of a spark, so that was what we’d been doing during the week.

‘‘We’re not going to be getting ahead of ourselves, it’s one game, the challenge will be to get that balance right every week.’’

The Warriors got off to a blistering start with tries to Shaun Johnson, Bodene Thompson and Jacob Lillyman before the Broncos got on the board, with a score from Kiwi Alex Glenn in the 29th minute.

They dominated the early play with Shaun Johnson challenging the line more than he’s been lately, the forwards getting stuck in and less of the handling errors from the outside backs.

The Broncos did have a sniff of getting back in the contest late in the first half, but had two tries ruled out for forward passes.

For both of these, the Warriors defence was badly exposed and it gave the players a wakeup call that the game was far from over.

‘‘We definitely didn’t feel safe halftime,’’ McFadden said.

‘‘So we had to go out and again, which was good.

‘‘That was probably the most pleasing bit which was that we had a lot go our way in the first half, to Wayne Bennett at play but we came out, stayed on task and did what we planned to do.

‘‘We were pretty aggressive after halftime and that was an important period.’’

David Fusitu’a, who’s cementing himself a regular spot on the wing for the foreseeable future, scored two second half tries, while Ryan Hoffman and Solomone Kata also got in on the action as the Broncos looked increasingly fatigued.

They did pick up the game’s last try, from Tevita Pangai Junior, but it counted for little.

Warriors captain, Hoffman said it was pleasing to see the team put into games what they’ve been practicing.

‘‘We finally played the way we’ve been training,’’ he said.

‘‘We’ve been putting in really good performances in training, but for whatever reason it hadn’t really been happening in the game.

‘‘We committed to everything we did and had 17 blokes doing that tonight and that’s what you need to win a game of footy.’’

While it was an impressive win, it also must be remembered that they played a Broncos side that had four players in it back up from playing in Origin I three days prior, plus Corey Oates and Matt Gillett were rested.

Broncos coach Wayne Bennett said the Warriors were able to make good use of the extra preparation time they had.

‘‘They had a week to think about their season and that makes a huge difference,’’ Bennett said.

‘‘We weren’t on, so that them more confidence.’’

(Shaun Johnson, Bodene Thompson, Jacob Lillyman, 2 David Fusitu’a, Ryan Hoffman, Solomone Kata tries; Johnson 4 goals) (Alex Glenn, Jordan Kahu, Tevita Pangai tries; Corey Parker 2 goals, Jordan Kahu goal). 18-6 gave