Johnson likely to start against Knights
Star player gets through training
Shaun Johnson’s chances of playing against the Knights on Sunday have improved dramatically after he got through training yesterday.
Warriors coach Andrew McFadden, rated his halfback’s prospects of playing as being 50/50 when he named his team for this weekend’s game on Tuesday.
However, it looks far more likely he has got over the ankle injury picked up late in the 24-16 win over the Titans last weekend and will again partner Chad Townsend in the halves.
‘‘Hopefully I’ll be able to play this weekend., I feel a bit more confident after the session I went through today,’’ Johnson said.
‘‘I wasn’t expecting it to feel that good and I’m stoked that I got through it.’’
McFadden was also hopeful about the prospects of his star player being available to go up against a Newcastle side badly struggling for form.
‘‘We’ll wait to see how he pulls up tomorrow but he ran really well today and it’s certainly looking optimistic,’’ McFadden said.
While Johnson was involved in yesterday’s session, he did swap out from time to time with the highly promising Tuimoala Lolohea who is yet to make his NRL debut but will play on Sunday if Johnson cannot.
‘‘It’s great for Tui that he gets this opportunity to train with the first grade,’’ McFadden said.
‘‘He’s certainly a talented player and someone I’m looking to give an opportunity to at some point, whether it’s this weekend we’re not sure, but certainly he’s ready to go if he does.’’
It has been another week where a Warriors player has been in the news for the wrong reasons. This time it was Sam Tomkins being fined $100 by Gold Coast police for urinating in a public place at 5am on Sunday morning.
While the incident was minor, McFadden said he was ‘‘disappointed’’ with how long the players stayed out although they were not given a curfew.
‘‘There are no real rules at the moment, there was a long turnaround and I allowed them to go out,’’ he said.
‘‘I was a little disappointed with how late they stayed out but we’ve moved past that.’’
The Knights have lost their past four games and have won twice all season.
That means they should be there for the taking on Sunday and if the Warriors want to be taken seriously as contenders for the top eight, there are no excuses for them not picking up two points.
The Knights should be better this weekend though as lock Jeremy Smith is back from a knee injury and Joey Leilua returns to centre after recovering from a hamstring injury.
The Warriors will have a couple of side issues to deal with this weekend, like their emotional return to Mt Smart Stadium and Simon Mannering making his 200th appearance for the club and captaining them for the 100th time.
‘‘Those are diversions and we need to put them out of our minds because we need to expect the best Newcastle team is going to turn up,’’ McFadden said.
‘‘You look across their team and they’re high quality; they haven’t had a lot of luck this year and we expect them to be pretty fired up.
‘‘I think things have settled down for them and I’m sure they’ll be far more focused on their football this weekend.
‘‘For every game, you’ve got to lay the platform in the middle and I need to challenge our forwards to do that,’’ he added.
‘‘We just want to execute better, we’re starting to get that consistent effort, we need to be on top of that, but our offensive game is certainly not polished and our defence at times has lapses, so we’ve got to work on those little things.’’