Warriors stars are shining big and bright

ARE YOU watching Australia? For so long on the other side of the Tasman the Warriors have been regarded as little more than an afterthought by their media, with a few patronising cliches thrown their way whenever they are doing well or badly.

Phil Gould is giving the Warriors the respect they deserve, but the way they played against the Broncos last night should make other pundits in Australia follow suit.

Their coach Andrew McFadden has got the team humming right now and surely a visit inside the top eight for the first time in nearly two years isn’t far away.

There are less of those crazy moments from the Warriors now, you know the ones, when someone tries to step outside the game plan and do something special. The players are sticking to what McFadden has told them to do and this has happened because he’s shown himself to be a ruthless coach.

Previous coaches of the Warriors have been star struck by the players on the books. Not so McFadden, he doesn’t care what sort of reputation a player has, or how much he earns, if you don’t play like he wants you to and if you don’t fully commit yourself to the cause, then there’s the door.

One of the positives from a Warriors’ point of view last night, of which there were many, was how well Sam Tomkins played.

It wasn’t long ago that Broncos’ No 1, Ben Barba, was being hailed as the best player in the entire NRL, the Dally M medal from 2012 proves that.

But for the past two seasons, he’s been well below his best. Who was the best last night? It has to go down as a draw and that’s because Tomkins was pushed off by Barba as he ran away to score for the Broncos.

It was a defensive lapse that blighted Tomkins’ performance,