Kearney praises young Warriors

STEPHEN Kearney has given the Warriors a pass mark for their first hit out of 2018 after overcoming a second-string Melbourne Storm side in Rotorua.

The Warriors too were without most of their first-choice players but Melbourne was completely unrecognisable from the team that won the premiership last year as their stars focused on Friday night’s World Club Challenge win over Leeds.

That being the case, it was tough for Kearney to draw too much from the 20-14 victory. But he believes they have at least given themselves a solid base to work from ahead of next week’s final trial against the Titans.

‘‘The guys worked really hard in areas we wanted to be good at today so that was a positive,’’ the coach told Sunday News.

‘‘Obviously they scored three tries and on a couple of them we need to make some adjustments technically. But for the most part in terms of the consistency right throughout the game, I thought it was pretty good.’’

The Warriors outscored the Storm four tries to three, with Solomone Kata, David Fusitu’a, Ligi Sao and Lewis Soosemea crossing for the home team.

They defended well for long periods, but were guilty of two poor defensive reads early and late in the game and the Storm made them pay on both occasions.

The last of those was particularly disappointing, coming directly off a scrum that saw Melbourne youngster Ryan Papenhuyzen run the length of the field.

‘‘The last try they scored off the scrum we had one player come in which he shouldn’t, so things like that we need to improve on,’’ Kearney said. ‘‘We can be better when we’ve got the footy too but that’s something for us to look at closely over the next couple of days.’’

On the plus side, there were a number of solid contributions from the squad.

Props James Gavet and Chris Satae were a handful in the middle, while Ligi Sao impressed with his offloads.

Timing was an issue on attack, which was to be expected, but halfback Mason Lino worked into the match and set up Sao’s try with a deft grubber.

Sam Cook looked sharp at times from dummy-half and Fusitu’a backed up his strong