Warriors waste winning chance
Andrew Webster admired his team’s effort and resilience in the loss to the Roosters, but their performance showed they’re still a work in progress. reports.
No, the Warriors weren’t able to end their losing streak against the Sydney Roosters, which has now extended to six games, but for the second week in a row there was evidence that things have changed at the club.
The 20-12 defeat in Sydney yesterday was a game that really was for the Warriors’ taking, but it ended up being two points lost.
After Addin Fonua-Blake scored a Warriors try in the 62nd minute to close the gap to six points, coach Andrew Webster’s team had plenty of opportunities to score further tries, but frustratingly, they couldn’t nail any of them. Even so, Webster liked a lot of what he saw.
‘‘I’m super proud at how hard we’re competing and for how long,’’ the Warriors coach said.
‘‘When things aren’t going our way we’re not throwing the towel in, so I’m super proud of that.
‘‘We just keep making it really hard, putting ourselves under
pressure. The possession count is getting out of control.
‘‘We knew that, we wanted to work in [it]. I could see we were trying to get better at that, but we just can’t lose confidence and we will sort it out.
‘‘If we combine that with the resilience and how hard we’re working for each other, then we’re going to win enough games.’’
The two biggest attacking blunders from the Warriors was not having anyone at dummy half when Ed Kosi was tackled a couple of metres from the
Roosters line, and also the ball dropped cold by Dylan Walker as they’d stretched the opposition defence.
‘‘When we got it to a six-point game, I felt like we had enough ball there to win it, to go after the game,’’ Webster said.
‘‘There was probably a bit of fatigue factor, with how much pressure we put on ourselves, that we weren’t really executing the speed we wanted.
‘‘Concentration was down, that was a bad mistake, no-one at dummy half. We dropped the ball on the other side.
‘‘When you get that much ball and opportunity at the end of the game, you want to be swinging punches with good execution.
‘‘We were trying so hard, but just weren’t nailing it at the right time. So I felt like we could have gone after it better.’’
But Webster is confident that the Warriors can become more clinical on attack at crucial times. They’re not yet the finished product of what he’s looking for and
that’s understandable as he’s only recently taken charge of a team that has seven new faces in it.
But he felt they should have kept their composure better in the second half.
‘‘There was a long time on the clock. We didn’t have to score off that next play,’’ he said.
‘‘We could have built more pressure. But when we do go after it, go at it as speed and back yourself that we’re going to come away with something here.
‘‘I felt like in those times the concentration levels [dropped]. ‘‘. . . but the thing I learnt is that if we were clinical, we could have put them under some pressure, drained them and won the game.’’