Go ahead, jump on bandwagon
Warriors captain gladly welcomes new-found fans
Roger Tuivasa-Sheck wants to welcome on board all the people who’ve become Warriors fans all of a sudden.
The club is having its best ever start to a season and by yesterday had already sold 13,000 tickets for Saturday’s NRL game against the Broncos. The club expects 20,000 to be sold by game day.
Last weekend’s game against Cowboys was a 25,600 sellout and it’s all in stark contrast to the 9176 who turned up for their final game of the 2017 season, against the Sea Eagles.
Some of the club’s long suffering fans may resent the fair-weather new supporters, but the Warriors captain says he has no problem with people jumping on the bandwagon.
‘‘We love it,’’ Tuivasa-Sheck said. ‘‘I know there are a lot of loyal fans out there who are disappointed, you can’t blame them. But they’re loving how we’re going, they’re supporting us and it’s only a good thing to get their support. So thank you for jumping on board.’’
With the unbeaten streak now at five games, there’s the feeling that this isn’t just a surprisingly good start to the campaign with some fortunate results, but that this is actually how good this team is.
For Tuivasa-Sheck and the other senior players, they’re determined that this isn’t going to be a flash in the pan.
‘‘We just look back to previous years and that’s what drives us,’’ he said. ‘‘We don’t want to be a team that just wins five games and then falls away. We want to be a team that continues to grow from here and if we start to celebrate too early we can fall off the wagon, so we’ve got to keep working each week.’’
The Warriors will face a Broncos team that has got off to a surprisingly poor start to the campaign, with two wins from its first five games, including defeats to the Titans and Knights over the past fortnight.
Despite this, Warriors coach Stephen Kearney expects them to be back to their best for this fixture.
‘‘They are a football club that’s always going to turn up ready to play,’’ Kearney said.
‘‘I anticipate that’s going to be no different this week, it was a very similar situation for us last week [against a struggling Cowboys], I’m sure the Broncos will be here playing their best footy, which means we’ve got to play our best footy.
‘‘I thought they performed pretty well against the Knights without a great deal of luck,’’ he added.
The Warriors have made minimal changes to their team for Saturday’s game against the Broncos, from the one that defeated the Cowboys 22-12 last weekend.
The starting team is unchanged, while second rower Isaiah Papali’i comes on to an extended bench after missing the last three rounds with a knee injury.
Also, rookie hooker Sam Cook is listed after playing in the reserve grade team the past three weeks.