Playing long game pays off for Warriors
Warriors halfback Sean O’Sullivan said the team knew it could play the long game in the incredible 34-31 win over the Raiders on Saturday.
The Raiders lost three players early on, while Curtis Scott battled on with a broken rib.
However, they were the better team in the first half, leading 25-6 at the break and were also up 31-10 with half an hour to go.
But then fatigue set in and the Warriors started a comeback that ranks as the greatest in the history of the club, to grab the two competition points.
O’Sullivan, who was making his NRL debut for the Warriors, revealed they knew the Raiders would eventually fade as they had only one fit player on their interchange bench for 67 minutes, so targeted hitting them up the middle as much as possible.
‘‘We had a long game mentality,’’ O’Sullivan told Stuff.
‘‘We thought we could wear them down, because they had a lot of injuries, which was horrible for them and they were very tired.
‘‘But for us, we were looking at it as an opportunity to really wear them down.
‘‘With the ball, we were trying to go through them and with a lot of support, so we worked it to our advantage and ended up coming up home pretty strong.
‘‘But we also got our defence right and our attack came from that. It was a great team effort,
‘‘We could have thrown in the towel when we were down by a bit, but it showed that we have a great team spirit at the club and care for each other.’’
However, while it was a superb comeback, what was concerning was how easily the Warriors’ defence opened up in the first half and it would be a fair assumption to make that the only reason why the Warriors got back into the game was because the Raiders forwards were exhausted.
‘‘We’ll take a lot out of that first half,’’ O’Sullivan said.
‘‘I know the scoreboard had us down by a lot, but we were creating a lot of opportunities, it’s just that our defence was letting us down.
‘‘So we spoke about executing a lot of the details in that first half and it was pretty sad that we didn’t execute what we spoke about, but we’ll talk about that and fix it.’’
Even after Adam Pompey’s dramatic try in the 78th minute to put the Warriors in front, there was one more twist, as with 15 seconds left on the clock Jordan Rapana dived to the corner flag when the Raiders
looked to have an overlap.
But Roger Tuivasa-Sheck made an incredible try saving tackle to stop him scoring.
‘‘I was on the other side of the field, but it was amazing,’’ O’Sullivan said of TuivasaSheck’s feat.
‘‘He was a freak, he was unbelievable and that’s why he’s one of the best fullbacks in the game and why he’s our leader, we all look up to him and it’s so easy to get up for a game when your fullback is doing some of the plays he’s doing.’’
O’Sullivan joined the Warriors from the Broncos this year and was expected to spend the season as back up to Chanel Harris-Tavita.
He got his opportunity to play first-grade footy when HarrisTavita injured his foot in the loss to the Knights last week, so O’Sullivan should be the club’s halfback for the next three months. It was a positive start from him, he kicked well and made a good job at building combinations with those around him.
‘‘There was some good and bad,’’ he said. ‘‘Plenty to work on, but a step in the right direction for me in getting myself into the team and building some combinations with the boys. It was the first or second time I’ve played with a lot of them and hopefully we can keep building and figure out how certain individuals like to get the ball or how we can best use them.
‘‘Then on defence, on our edge we can look at the combinations and how we like to defend.’’
‘‘We could have thrown in the towel when we were down by a bit, but it showed that we have a great team spirit at the club and care for each other.’’
Sean O’Sullivan
Warriors halfback