NZ Warriors 2020 Round 16 Review: Warriors dominate Knights and keep playoff hopes alive

After last weeks closer than expected win over the bottom-dwelling Bulldogs, the Warriors returned to where the NRL 2020 season version 2 all began as they hosted the Newcastle Knights at Scully Park in Tamworth. The Knights have got a lot of injuries to key players in their squad and facing the Warriors during their recent run of form was never going to end well for the Newcastle side as the Warriors ran away with their biggest win of 2020 36-6.

Well what a performance, I predicted a Warriors win here but not by 30 points. Even though the Warriors only lead 8-6 at halftime, they never looked in doubt and put on an attacking clinic in the second half, almost scoring at will and showing how dangerous they can be with the ball in hand.

This team is building something special here, and I think being in camp together all season has helped this side. Being away from NZ and family is hard on the everyone in camp, but I think it has made the Warriors a more formidable outfit. The young players in this side have grown so much, and this should be the start of some good times for the Warriors and the fans alike.

The Warriors form in the past 6 weeks has been great with narrow losses only against the Roosters and the Panthers.

This win keeps their slim playoff hopes alive, sitting in 9th position, 4 points behind the 8th placed Sharks. If they want to crack they eight they just need to keep winning, plus a win in round 18 against the Sharks would help the cause, not to mention the fact that the Sharks have not won a match this year against a top 8 side and face 3 teams in the top 8 in the final 4 weeks. So the Warriors have given themselves a shot they just need to keep the momentum going. 

There was plenty to smile about this week, which leads to my positives from the game.

The Warriors attack was on point this week, 9 line breaks, 30 tackle breaks and 18 offloads. The Warriors have been getting the wins but not blowing anyone off the park so you kind of had a feeling that eventually everything would click and the points would start flowing, and it happened this round.

I think the best part of the performance was the fact that the Warriors kept their foot down and did not let up until the final whistle. It's that killer instinct that has been lacking for some time for the New Zealand club, and it is something that needs to become part of their DNA.

Despite playing a more expansive style, the Warriors kept their error rate in the single digits and ending the match with an 89% completion rate.

The Chanel Harris-Tavita and Kodi Nikorima halves pairing is continuing to impress me.

Nikorima has been playing some of his best-ever football the past few weeks and appears to be flourishing without Blake Green there.

Harris-Tavita is growing every week, and taking more control of the matches is starting to find his voice out there. Both players complement each other's style, and neither tries to overplay their hand and try to take over the match on their own.

If they continue to grow their combination and get some good ball from the pack, then I only see good things in their future.

Speaking of the pack, the forwards had another good night with 6 of the forwards running for over 100 metres, with last weeks Warrior to improve Lachlan Burr leading the pack with 188 metres.

I like how the forwards are all stepping up now, you usually could pick 2 or 3 of the pack that played well with the rest not really pulling their weight. They just need to keep turning up and focus on controlling the middle. This kind of result is what happens when the Warriors forwards bully their opposition. With good ball, Nikorima and Harris-Tavita have all the time in the world to unleash the backline and the Warriors backs =have attacking threats everywhere.

George Jennings has been fantastic not the wing and is sure to be earning himself a contract somewhere. I would be looking at him if I was the Warriors as they need some good stock in the Wings to keep Ken Maumalo and David Fusitu'a on their toes.

I don't have much, but the game wasn't perfect, which leads me to my negative from the match.

Yes, I only have one negative this week and its a regular in this section, and that's missed tackles.

The Warriors missed 20 tackles, which is still too much if they want to keep themselves in the playoff hunt.

They strangled the Knights out of this match and covered their first-up tackling with some good scrambling defence, but I just want to see them tighten up their defence in the middle and around the ruck, if they do that then they won't leak any soft tries and strengthen their chances of walking out victors.

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My Warrior of the week goes to Roger Tuivasa-Sheck.

What a day out for the Skipper, 269 metres, 2 line breaks and 2 tries. As the only kiwi player in camp without his family, there has been plenty of articles writing throughout the week about how tough it has been for Roger. He has said he thinks about coming home all the time, but he is toughing it out for the team and is truly showing his commitment.

For me, the most encouraging aspect of Tuivasa-Sheck's games recently has been watching him finally start to run off the shoulders of his big forwards, if they can offload the ball to him running that line, I find it hard for anyone to stop him breaking the game wide open.

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I have no Warrior to improve this week. I have watched the game several times, and I could pick out someone I was disappointed in. So instead, I would like to mention Chanel Harris-Tavita.

I mentioned above that Harris-Tavita is growing each week, he is the future of this club and it's his attitude that has impressed me the most this year.

Spending weeks on the sideline waiting for your chance to prove yourself can be challenging and several players have thrown their toys and demanded releases, but Harris-Tavita just continued to bide his time and make the most of his shot when he got it.

He does all the things you expect from a half, but I think his defence shows the heart he has, yes he can do the big hits but the amount of times he comes in to clean up some sloppy defence shows his character. Fingers crossed the Warriors can manage to keep him within the club longterm as I would love to see CHT become a one-club man.

Round 17 sees the Warriors return to the Central Coast to host the Parramatta Eels.

The Eels are hard to predict, they went from holding the Storm scoreless in round 15 to getting thumped 38-0 by the Rabbitohs. They currently sit 3rd on the ladder and are going to be a massive challenge for the Warriors. However, if the Warriors can continue to play like they have been for the past 6 weeks, then they may be able to get another win here.

Daniel Alvaro and George Jennings will not be playing in this match as per the loan agreement prohibiting them from playing against their own team, this is a massive loss for the Warriors, and I'm not sure who will fill their spots. Perhaps we will see Gerard Beale back on the wing and Joshua Curran onto the bench.

Unfortunately, I think the Eels will come away victors here, but it will be close, so I'm picking the Eels to win by 6. While also hoping the Warriors prove me wrong.

So that was an impressive Round 16, and as usual, I will leave you with some questions.

Do you see the Warriors making the top eight?

Who would you bring in to replace Jennings and Alvaro?

Who was your player of the day?

What is your score prediction for the Eels clash?

NZ Warriors 2020 Round 15 Review: Warriors get out of jail against gallant Bulldogs

After last weeks narrow defeat to the table-topping Panthers, the Warriors travelled to ANZ Stadium to face the 16th place Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs.

Despite their position on the ladder, the Bulldogs have been putting in some valiant efforts but have lacked the ability to close out games and it was more of the same this week as the Warriors survived an early scare to come away with a 20-14 victory.

Well that was a lot closer than I would have liked. When the Bulldogs scored their final try minutes into the second half and pushed their lead out to 14-6, I thought the Warriors had come into the match already expecting to win and were going to get the rug pulled out from under them.

Thankfully for Warriors fans, the grit I have been praising for the last month was still there and they managed to get the job done. With the team missing Eliesa Katoa, Patrick Herbert and Chanel Harris-Tavita, I expected the Warriors to be lacking some cohesion and I was correct but I think the replacements did a good enough job in filling the gaps.

It wasn't a great performance but the Warriors continue to show that if they stay within range of their opponents they can get the results, and for the remainder of thier draw with some tougher teams the Warriors are going to need to consistently keep themselves in the hunt.

The gap between the top eight and bottom eight is starting to grow and chances of a top eight finish for the club is getting slimmer, all the Warriors can do is continue to notch up wins and see what happens.

It is a case of what if, but if the Warriors had won their round 9 clash against the Titans instead of going down 16-12, then they would be sitting at ninth only 2 points outside of the eight with a much better shot at playoff football, but that is the gift of hindsight.

Regardless of where they end up on the ladder, it is imperative that the Warriors move into 2021 with this newfound attitude. If they can start next season the same way they are ending this year then they give themselves a great chance of cementing a playoff spot. 

There was quite a bit to praise this week, which leads to my positives from the game.

The Warriors backline put in the work this week, with all of them bar Hayze Perham and Paul Turner running for over 100 metres, with Roger Tuivasa-Sheck leading the side with 334 metres.

One thing the Warriors need to do though is having players running off the shoulders in support, I have been begging Tuivasa-Sheck to do this and sure enough, when he actually does it he streaks off to score, the backline lacks speed with the exception of Sheck and Kodi Nikorima so RTS needs to be the key man running those lines just off the edge, the Warriors have plenty of players that can offload the ball so they need to take advantage of it.

The young forwards continue to impress me, even with the backs stacking up the metres, Adam Blair, Tohu Harris and Jazz Tevaga all cracked the triple digits with Tevaga lead the pack with 185 metres. The majority of the pack were sitting just under the 100-metre mark which is great to see.

The pack has been building along nicely and there is going to plenty of room for thought for Todd Payten this week when Katoa is available again as it will be hard to take a player out.

If it was me, Katoa would be starting on the left, Harris on the right and Tevage in the middle, and the player to be omitted would be Isaiah Papali'i, I thought he played well but I think Jack Murchie offers more and needs a spot in the 17.

Paul Turner had a good hitout in his debut and is a star in the making, he almost scored in the early stages of the match and then had two tries taken off him in the second half.

He was a little gunshy in the halves and the Warriors relied heavily of Nikorima but I think Turner will feature in the side quite a bit in 2021. He has plenty of natural ball running talent and there is an Xfactor about him that you can not train. I guess it will just come down to what position he winds up playing in the future, next year I would be happy to have him as the 14 as I could see him filling many gaps in the backline and would give him time to get used to first grade.

Lastly, the Warriors improved their discipline. I have been critical of how many penalties and ruck infringements the Warriors have given away but this week they kept them both low, conceding only 4 penalties and 1 ruck infringement. If they can keep this up they will pressure their opposition and with that pressure, the Warriors will be able to force mistakes and gain the upper hand.

I did have issues with the performance however which leads me to match negatives.

The Warriors had another slow start, despite looking the more threatening side in the first half, the Bulldogs jumped out to a 10-0 lead in the first 20 minutes. It was simply down to some poor Warriors defense which is at least something the Warriors can address and work on. The Warriors are showing they can shut teams down in the second half so if they can emulate that in their first-half performances they should be able to find some success.

The Warriors error rate was poor, making 12 errors in this match. You do expect a few more errors when the team is chancing their arm but they just need to reign in some of the 50/50 chances they are taking. They are a dangerous side when they play confident and throw the ball around it is all about finding that sweet spot.

Lastly was the Warriors lack of polish and poor fifth tackle options.

I put this down to the teams changes during the week and having Turner in the halves for his debut. The team struggle early on and didn't seem to be on the same page on attack with same poor decisions late in the tackle count. There were plenty of times where the Warriors appeared lost on the last tackle and died with the ball in hand.

The biggest one for me was Karl Lawton kicking from dummy half when the rest of the side didn't seem to know that he was going to do it.

It got better as the game progressed, showing that once the players were comfortable things starting to mesh. Nikorima was a bit dicey at the start of the match but took hold of the game and started creating plenty of opportunities and judging by Katoa's year to date and the performance of my Warrior of the day, it is clear that the second-rower on the same side of the park as Nikorima is going to feature heavily in the Warriors attack.

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My Warrior of the match goes to Jack Murchie.

After missing out on the gameday 17 since round 10, Murchie finally got another chance to show the Warriors what he can offer and he delivered in spades.

I liked what I saw from the young forwards in the early stages of this season and was perplexed at his axing but with Katoa and Jack Hetherington playing well it did make it hard for him to get a look in.

He showed a lot more on attack this week than in his early matches, back then it looked like he was a young large forward that would be a battering ram but this match highlighted the attacking weapon he can be. He scored two nice tries and showed some great hands when helping set Adam Pompey up for his try.

He needs to be in the gameday 17 as I said above but I don't see him getting a starting spot of Katoa or Harris so an interchange forward would be his ideal spot right now, especially with Papali'i and my warriors to improve not really delivering what is required from the Warriors right now.

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My Warrior to improve goes to Lachlan Burr.

News during the week was that Burr will not be at the Warriors club next year and will be looking for a gig elsewhere. Unfortunately for him this match showed why the Warriors are not extended his contract, he was not awful by any means but he just lacked any punch when running with the ball, watching the match I thought his biggest issue is that he runs too high when going into contact and lacks the strength to continue to push forward after being wrapped up by defenders. He also had a few wayward offloads that wound up going to Bulldog players. I like Burr and think he can continue playing in the NRL as an interchange forward and I wish him well with wherever his future leads him.

Round 15 sees the Warriors host the Newcastle Knights at Scully Park in Tamworth.

It's great to see the Warriors take a match to Tamworth where they spent their quarantine and should be a great match for the locals to watch.

I was looking forward to seeing the Warriors play Blake Green for the first time since his exit from the club but it looks like he has injured his ACL in the Knights 12-0 win over the Cowboys. 

It's horrible to see that happen to anyone and I really feel for Green as I thought he had been playing well for the Knights and at his age, this could well be the end of his career, I really hope that isn't the case and wish him well in his recovery.

The Knights are relatively safe in the top eight but have not looked that convincing for the past month and the Warriors are in with a chance to come away with the victory. The Warriors should have Katoa and Chanel Harris-Tavita back in their lineup and I their inclusions firm up the Warriors chances.

I think the Warriors have the edge in this match with thier new physical style and the Knights missing some key players so I'm predicting the Warriors to win this match by 10.

So that was a closer than expected Round 15, and as usual, I will leave you with some questions.

Where do you see the Warriors ending up on the ladder?

What do you do with Jack Murchie when Eliesa Katoa returns this week?
Who was your player of the day?

What is your score prediction for the Knights clash?

NZ Warriors 2020 Round 14 Review: Valiant Warriors take NRL leaders to the limit

After last weeks hard-fought victory against the Sea Eagles, the Warriors made their way back to their makeshift home ground on the Central Coast to face the top of the table Penrith Panthers.

This was always going to be a tough ask for the New Zealand side, especially when Penrith were looking to score their club record-breaking ninth win in a row. However, I think many fans were hoping that if the Warriors could not walk away with the win that they at least show a bit of fight. And fight they did as the Warriors agonizingly went down 18-12.

 

The Warriors new attitude has been a shining light the past four weeks, the Panthers have been building this year and look like they could go all the way and the played that way in this match, starting the game strongly, dominating possession and territory. Nathan Cleary terrorized the Warriors and kept them camped in their own red zone forcing repeat sets. The Warriors goal-line defence withstood many attacks, but eventually, the points started to come. 

The Warriors kept themselves in the hunt though scoring just before the break and scoring the only tries in the second half. I think they were a little hard done by on one occasion when Stephen Crichton snatched a try saving intercept from what looked to be an offside position, a tough call for sure but one that wasn't even mentioned anywhere after the match.

The loss was hard to take with the chances of a top-eight finish eroding, but I think the Warriors will walk away from this match with confidence and their tough draw no longer looks that bad.

Originally I had picked the Warriors to only get one more win this season, and that was the upcoming match against the Bulldogs, however now I think the Warriors could quite possibly win the majority of their final matches, with the hardest one being their round 19 encounter against the Raiders.

Will they make the eight, no I don't believe so but the end of the season is not going to be as dire as I thought.

Before I move on, I just want to mention the fans that were kicked out of the grounds for allegedly hurling racist taunts to Brent Naden. There is no place for that in the game, and I hope they get punished, life ban from grounds or something. Unfortunately, it took the sheen of a good Warriors performance and was the only talking point at the end of the game.

There was a lot from this match that brought a smile to my face, which leads to my positives from the game.

When the Warriors were down 16-0, I was worried, I thought that after all the hard work the Warriors had done the past few weeks to be a more competitive team was about to go down the drain.

But that newfound grit started to shine, and the Warriors clawed their way back into the match and could have easily snuck away with the win. With everything that has gone on this year, it's great to see the Warriors ear respect from the commentators and opposition alike. However, I was a bit disappointed that their performance barely got a mention in any of the wrapup shows from across the Tasman.

I will be talking about the Warriors defence a bit later, but I want to highlight the Warriors goal-line defence. It felt like the Warriors were camped on their own goal-line for an age and the Panthers have shown how dangerous they can be with the ball in hand, but the Warriors refused to let them stroll over without working for it.

That type of effort comes down to attitude, and hopefully, it is a sign of what's to come for the rest of the season and beyond.

Again I thought the Forwards did well, due to constantly having to fight out of their own half they struggled to get the big numbers, but against a more experienced pack, the young guns stood up. I look at 2020 as a character-building exercise for the younger players, and I think the Warriors pack is going to be stronger for it next season.

The halves pair continued to grow chemistry and are meshing well. There is still a long way to go, but I think Kodi and Chanel complement each other, and I look forward to watching Chanel take more control of the kicking game when he grows in confidence.

Before I move on I just need to mention Chanel separately, that kid has heart in spades, and his tackle on Liam Martin will be included on highlight reels for years to come. I love watching him throw himself into tackles, I wince because I worry that he is going to hurt himself, but so far he hasn't, and it's great to see him trying to turn a game in the Warriors favour when the pressure is on. He is a star in the making and will be a cornerstone of this Warriors club for many years.

I did have some issues, however, though, which brings me to my match negatives.

I praised the Warriors goal-line defence but everywhere else on the park the Warriors were woeful. They ended the match with 42 missed tackles their highest tally for weeks. If it wasn't for some good scrambling defence, the Panthers could have opened the game wide open.

Reduce the missed tackles and increase your chances to walk away with the much needed 2 points.

The Warriors could have got the win here, but they let themselves down with errors, making 12 in total. 

There were several in the final stages of the match when the Warriors really needed to wrap the ball tight and get themselves into scoring positions.

Was it weather, fatigue, trying too hard or overthinking Im not sure but they need to show the ball more respect this week.

The Panthers had the lions share of the football due to some smart plays, but the Warriors made matters worst by handing Penrith more possession through penalties and ruck infringements.

They conceded 7 penalties and 6 ruck infringements which is way too much against the best team in the league right now. Yes some of the calls against them were suspect but effort to cry foul.

Thankfully it is something that can be worked on, and I expect to see a more disciplined performance this Sunday.

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My Warrior of the match once again goes to Tohu Harris.

Harris has been fantastic this season and lead from the front yet again, leading the Warriors in tackles (58) and running metres (142).

I hope that the young players in the camp are using this COVID situation to absorb everything Harris does throughout the week in regards to training and prep and it results in a stack of forwards that deliver consistently every week.

Rumours were circling throughout the week that Harris is looking to leave the club, he has disregarded this news but with his contract expiring at the end of next season, the Warriors will need to start working on ensuring he stays with the club for longer as he will be a massive loss if he decides to move on.

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My Warrior to improve goes to Isaiah Papali'i.

I was almost tempted to give everyone a pass this week but Papali'i stood out for me for all the wrong reasons.

After not making the side for several weeks, Papali'i finally got the call up with Jack Hetherington being suspended and it was his time to make a statement as he looks to earn a new contract.

Unfortunately, he didn't do much to show the club that he needs to be kept on, he appeared slower than usual and didn't offer anything on attack and made several poor defensive reads. I feel that his time at the club is at an end and the best thing for both parties is to move on, I'm sure with a new start at another club we will see Papali'i grow and utilise the promise that he use to show, he just seems to be in a rut right now.

Round 15 sees the Warriors travel to ANZ Stadium to face the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs in a rare return to Sunday afternoon football.

Despite the Bulldogs languishing at the bottom of the table, they have been battlers all year and have been every team really work for their wins this year.

I think the Warriors will get the win this week, but this could be a speedbump game and the Warriors can not come into the match underestimating the Bulldogs.

If the forwards can gain the upper hand, it should allow Kodi and Chanel plenty of time to get the backline into scoring opportunities.

I'm picking the Warriors to win this match by 12.

So that was a valiant Round 14, and as usual, I will leave you with some questions.

Do you think the Warriors are heading in the right direction for 2021?
Where do you see the Warriors ending up on the ladder?
Who was your player of the day?

What is your score prediction for the Bulldogs clash?