‘Warriors gave it away’ – Ayshford

Winger Blake Ayshford conceded the Warriors gifted two points to the Raiders in their NRL match in Canberra on Saturday night.

The Warriors lost 20-8, ending their two-game winning streak. They failed to score any points in the second half.

The last 20 minutes was pretty ugly stuff from the Warriors and a big turnaround from the first 20 when they were the dominant side.

‘‘I don’t want to take anything away from the Raiders, but we gave them that game,’’ Ayshford said.

‘‘We played awesome in the first half and the score was 8-6.

‘‘It was like a semifinal atmosphere in the first half, but in the second we went away from our processes, which was to hand the ball back to them on their tryline.

‘‘We made it hard for ourselves doing all of the defence and also not completing our sets.’’

The Warriors had plenty of opportunities in the first half to add to the try scored by Ryan Hoffman in the sixth minute, but were held out by some resilient defending from the Raiders, particularly the effort of Jarrod Croker to hold up Roger Tuivasa-Sheck over the line.

It could be argued that the Warriors didn’t make the most of that early pressure, but Ayshford doesn’t agree.

‘‘They’re a good side and we planned to wear teams down,’’ he said.

‘‘If we came out playing in the second half like we did in the first, it would have been different.

‘‘We’ve seen the past couple of weeks that we’ve worn teams down, but we didn’t come out with the right attitude in the second half.

‘‘You’ve got to take opportunities when they arise and you would have seen a lot more from us in the second half had we had more ball down their end.’’ For the first time in a few weeks, the Warriors’ bad habits returned late in the game. They failed to concede sets, made errors and missed tackles.

‘‘We played that good style of footy in the first half where we defended well they had three or four sets on our line and couldn’t score, then we went down their end and got points on the board first,’’ Ayshford said.

The Raiders game was the first of four tough fixtures for the Warriors and they back up this one with a trip to Melbourne on Anzac Day, followed by a home game against the Roosters, then the Panthers away.

It’s a fearsome run of games, but Ayshford is confident they can bounce back.

● Meanwhile Cronulla’s premiership defence is now in full swing after claiming their fourth straight NRL win with a comprehensive 28-2 wipeout of Penrith on Sunday. One week after holding out Melbourne in a grand final rematch, the Sharks again kept their tryline intact to stun the Penrith crowd and retain their top four spot. Not since 1994 have the black, white and blue been perfect in defence in back- to-back weeks, including their record 15-game winning streak last year.