Warriors welcome Johnson’s return to full fitness
In the middle of a gloomy situation, the Warriors have had some positive news, with Shaun Johnson close to being back to full fitness.
The halfback has barely trained for more than a month — only taking back in some basic drills during each week’s captain’s run due to his Achilles problem.
So his likely return to full training next week comes a timely fillip, with the Warriors desperate for improvement, off the back of three consecutive defeats.
“We haven’t had Shaun train this early in the week for the last five weeks,” said coach Andrew Webster. “He might be pulled out of one or two drills but he will do 80 per cent of the drills, slowly building him up and hopefully next week he can do everything. He is hopefully coming out of this.”
While Webster was reluctant to link the lack of recent offensive cohesion with Johnson’s absence from the training field — “it is certainly not an excuse” — he expected there would be benefits.
“It has had an impact on our attack and I can only see us getting better,” said Webster.
But there is a lot to fix, starting with the plague of errors and especially penalties that are killing momentum and inviting pressure from the opposition.
“[We are] not giving ourselves an opportunity through our discipline,” said Webster. “We are creating a lot of fatigue amongst ourselves. Trying to swing punches at the end of the game and our attack is clunky and slow and lethargic because we are putting ourselves under so much pressure.”
It’s a focus at training but is also about game smarts and reading the situation, instead of “over trying” in the enthusiasm to be aggressive.
While the team is under pressure, Webster wants them to find some calmness and clarity this week.
“You can be tense in these situations,” said Webster. “[So] be really clear minded rather than probably over heating mentally and trying to work too hard.”
But that will be hard on Sunday, against a red-hot Roosters team who have scored 100 points in their past two games.
“It’s round nine — it’s not the last week or do or die or anything like that,” said Webster. “For us to win we have to improve. It is obvious we are not where we want to be. I don’t see it as we have to win this two game block to have any chance [this season].
“I’m comfortable that if we make the right level of improvement and we play the way we want to, we will give ourselves the chance to win, and clearly if we do what we have done the last three weeks we are not going to get it.”