Warriors can sharpen impotent attack, says Evans
Defensively, the Warriors did everything they could to beat the Sea Eagles at Central Coast Stadium on Friday night. Offensively, they did everything they could to lose.
The 13-12 NRL defeat definitely falls into the two points lost category and it appears the Warriors will continue to struggle until they get their attack sorted out, because they’re not creating anywhere near the number of tries they should from the domination they’re having with their forwards.
‘‘It was disappointing. I really felt that we could win it,’’ Warriors prop Kane Evans told
‘‘We were rolling them down the field pretty good, it was just when we were on our try line, we seemed to be real frantic and turned the ball over.
‘‘Our defence was good and they only scored off two kicks, which was a positive for us, but we just need to do better with our attacks.’’
The Warriors have scored at least 20 points in a game only once this season, against the Raiders.
The coaches said they wanted to keep their attack basic at the start of the season and expand it from there, and while there have been numerous injuries, there haven’t been many signs improvement, with plays on the fifth tackle often woeful.
‘‘This was my first game, so I’m trying to build into it, but it can definitely get better,’’ Evans said. ‘‘I think we need to change it up a bit, in regards to playing with the halves and playing off the forwards.
‘‘We like to play off the halves a lot, but sometimes we need the forwards to play at the front and the halves at the back.
‘‘It’s only early in the season, so if we can get that versatility I reckon we can mix it up and get better results.’’
Friday’s game was Evans’ debut for the Warriors, with the former Eel having a delayed preseason because of an injury.
‘‘I’ve been playing the last few weeks, with Queensland Cup and played last week in the NSW Cup, so I’ve had some games and I felt pretty good out there,’’ he said.
‘‘Compared to last week’s game [against the Roosters] which the boys said was pretty fast, this was slower, so that’s the disappointing thing. We should have won it.’’
The Warriors were without Addin Fonua-Blake, Peta Hiku, Euan Aitken, Chanel HarrisTavita, Bayley Sironen, Bunty Afoa and Jamayne Taunoa-Brown for the Sea Eagles game.
It’s a large number of first grade players to be without, but Evans said that shouldn’t be the reason why they lost to the Sea Eagles.
‘‘It’s definitely not an excuse,’’ he said.
‘‘We’ve got depth and we’re all in to do our job. We’ve got to get the job done, it doesn’t matter who’s in.
‘‘From next week we’ve got Jamayne Taunoa-Brown and
Bunty Afoa back, so they’ll be good additions to the team.’’
Evans was the closest player to Daly Cherry-Evans when he landed his match-winning field goal with just two seconds left on the clock.
He rushed across to attempt to charge the kick down, although to be fair to him he was a bit too far away to have much of a chance.
‘‘Towards the back end of the game we knew that Cherry-Evans was going to kick it. We just had to stop it,’’ he said.
‘‘It was disappointing, I was right there and I tried to put my hands up to slap the ball, but I missed it by an inch.
‘‘I didn’t look at the ball, I turned away, flinched and missed it. So a lesson I took away was that I’ve got to look at it, touch the ball so they can’t get it over. It was a fairytale win for them.’’