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Warriors’ post match press conferences have often been depressing places over the last few years, with whoever the head coach was trying to explain what went wrong.
But on Saturday night after the Warriors beat the Cowboys 26-12 in Townsville, Tohu Harris wasn’t looking like he was carrying the weight of 1000s of depressed fans on his shoulders and Andrew Webster was happily talking about what’s working well.
It was a superb win against the team that finished third on the ladder last season and Webster felt his forwards were a big part of that.
“We wanted to see what our forward pack could do if we had more than 50% of the ball,” Webster said, with his team having 54% of possession in this game.
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“We haven’t had that in stages at the preseason trials and the start of the season. We wanted to see how dominant they could be.
Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images
It hasn’t taken long for Andrew Webster to stamp his mark on this Warriors team.
“They’re a very hard working side and it’s one of the strengths of our team and tonight we got to see that.
“I was really happy for them, they worked hard, they were fast over the advantage line with the ball and looked dangerous.”
There were 10 Warriors players who carried the ball for at least 100 metres, with Bunty Afoa two metres short of making it 11.
Marcelo Montoya carried it for an impressive 228 metres and Webster was pleased with how he, Ed Kosi on the other wing and debutant fullback Taine Tuaupiki made so much ground.
“For our back three, we’ve worked hard on that,” he said.
“If we’re going to get into an arm wrestle with a team we need them to get forward for us and once they get forward, these guys (forwards) can own it on tackle three, four and five and then we put a good kick in.
“I was impressed with how organised our forwards looked with the ball,” he added.
“Passing the ball to each other, knowing their role, reloading down their end so they were having one effort and then having another effort.”
Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images
Warriors’ Jazz Tevaga scored a try in his first game since August.
The Warriors lost Mitch Barnett with an injury during the game and it’s uncertain whether he’ll be available to play against the Bulldogs at Mt Smart Stadium on Sunday.
However, a line can already be put through Wayde Egan’s name, as he got knocked out when colliding with the largely anonymous Jason Taumalolo.
“Wayde has got a concussion,” Webster confirmed.
“He’s OK, he’s talking fine. It’s the third time he’s come off and they’re not all for concussion this year.
“But the poor bugger is in the wars at the moment and he’s pretty important to the way we want to play.”
The Warriors have conceded 44 points over the first three games of the season. That’s an average of 14.6 per game. Last year they leaked an average of 29.2 points per game, the worst in the NRL.
There were times in Townsville where the Warriors were defending their goal line, with real vigour, but the Cowboys didn’t score anything after the 13th minute and that’s something which pleased Webster.
“There were three or four efforts right at the end of the game where we could have let them score and still won the game, but we kept turning up for each other,” he said.
“We were desperate on our try line. We do need to get a bit more coordinated with our movements, spacings and things like that, but our try line defence is probably one of our strongest parts at the moment.”
Webster was also impressed with how Tuaupiki went on debut. But while he did well, Webster said Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad will be back in the No 1 jersey once he’s recovered from the concussion picked up in the Roosters game last weekend.
“Charnze is our fullback,” Webster confirmed.
“I spoke to Taine yesterday and told him you’re going to be an NRL player forever.
“How that works, we’ll work that out later. But if Charnze is fine, he deserves that spot, he’s an international.
“But Taine is down to earth and modest and he’ll go back, work hard and get hungry.
“It will work out for Taine, he’ll be playing NRL for a long time.”
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