Problems build for mistake-prone Warriors
Six games into the season and the Warriors already find themselves in a fairly decent-sized hole.
With only a five-day turnaround before a daunting Anzac Day clash against the Storm in Melbourne, they are up against the clock to dig themselves out.
Attack was the main issue on Saturday night as the Auckland club fell to their fourth loss of the NRL season with a mistakeriddled 17-10 defeat to the Cowboys at Mt Smart Stadium.
The Warriors had more than enough chances to win, bombing three scoring chances in the first half alone. Their lack of execution was compounded by poor game management after the break.
The playmakers failed to build sustained pressure on the Cowboys line and, apart from more Roger Tuivasa-Sheck magic, the attack in the final third was too predictable.
Having struggled to break down a Cowboys side that had lost their previous four games, it doesn’t bode well for their chances against the well-oiled Storm machine.
The good news for the Warriors is chief playmaker Blake Green is in line to return from a groin injury that has kept him out for the last two weeks.
But the players refused to use Green’s absence as an excuse for Saturday’s performance.
‘‘Just trying too much and overdoing our hand,’’ TuivasaSheck said when asked what went wrong.
‘‘The boys talked about going to the long game, completing our sets. But there were a lot of costly errors for us and we couldn’t hold it. I had a big error with a knockon and they got their momentum going. And I think we panicked in the back-end again similar to last week.’’
While Green may be back against the Storm, winger David Fusitu’a is unlikely to be available after being forced off with a rib injury in the 65th minute.
It added to a frustrating night for the Warriors, who made five line breaks to the Cowboys’ one as well as 37 tackle breaks to 20.
That promising work was undone by a 68 per cent completion rate (compared to 84 per cent for the visitors), with many errors in prime field position.
Peta Hiku, who again filled in for Green in the halves alongside Chanel Harris-Tavita, felt the Warriors were too frantic in attack and lacked a ‘‘dominant voice’’.
Veteran hooker Issac Luke was sharp early on only to have a surprisingly long spell on the bench as he shared the dummyhalf role with the returning Nathaniel Roache.
But Hiku pointed the finger at himself, admitting he should have done more to ease the pressure on Harris-Tavita and Tuivasa-Sheck.
‘‘We didn’t have one call that we were sticking with,’’ Hiku said.
‘‘There were a lot of costly errors for us.’’ Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, Warriors captain
‘‘I know we’ve been missing Greeny but that’s no excuse. That’s a role for me to step up and help out Chanel and Roger. We lost that connection and communication between us three.’’
However, both Tuivasa-Sheck and Hiku were confident they have enough time to find a solution ahead of the huge test that awaits them in Melbourne.
‘‘We trained really well, we had good structures and we backed Chanel, myself and Peta to play the plays,’’ Tuivasa-Sheck said. ‘‘It worked for us some of the time but we just couldn’t ice it. That was the problem [on Saturday] and we’ve got to go back to the drawing board and see see how we can be better.’’