Four Pointers: New Zealand Warriors 28 Brisbane Broncos 10
Warriors begin their customary run of form over Origin
Right on schedule, the Warriors put together one of their best performances of the season. Issac Luke was in vintage form, making tons of metres out of dummy half. Shaun Johnson was dancing and skipping evaders while the whole team just seemed to rally around each other in defence.
The 18 point victory over a weakened Broncos side doesn’t exactly scream ‘premiership contenders’ but it should give the team a boost of confidence in the short term. No doubt soon the talk of the Warriors as dark horses for the premiership will pop up soon enough.
Future opposition teams should be worried about the Warriors
Even if the inevitable implosion of the Warriors does happen in the later part of the season, that doesn’t mean that they can’t seriously ruin other teams chances of making the finals along the way.
Any team from now on that confronts the Warriors will be playing a dangerous side with confidence. Against the Broncos they ditched the boring, grinding tactics of coach Kearney and went back to their off-the-cuff style of play with plenty of offloads. It paid dividends and it got the team firing in attack.
At their very best, the Warriors are a side that can completely dismantle a team like the Storm. When they’re in that form, opposition teams can only hope their points difference doesn’t take too much of a hit.
Broncos regulars the one making the errors
The Broncos never gave themselves a chance to compete in the match with their atrocious completion rate. They made 15 errors making for just 59% of sets completed.
Astonishingly though it wasn’t the young guys making the errors, it was the proven first graders. James Roberts had a Burgess of a night with his handling as he made 3 errors. Jordan Kahu and Ben Hunt weren’t far behind with 2 apiece.
Different team combinations and new faces can disrupt a team’s style of play but it shouldn’t produce the amount of errors that it did from the Broncos.
Warriors still not quite playing the full 80
The Warriors big win might mask the fact that they’re still not quite competing for the entire game. After they scored an early try in the 2nd half, they clocked off a little. The Broncos scored twice within a 10 minute period as the Warriors forwards started to get a little lazy and the Broncos found gaps in their defence. In their weekly review of the game, they should highlight that as an area of improvement to be made. Better sides will punish the Warriors for it, if they’re not careful enough to address it.
Scoreboard
New Zealand Warriors- 28
Tries: Blake Ayshford (11m), Shaun Johnson (19m), Roger Tuivasa-Sheck (38m), Ken Maumalo (43m), James Gavet (67m)
Goals: Shaun Johnson 4/5
Brisbane Broncos- 10
Tries: James Roberts (52m, 62m)
Goals: Jordan Kahu 1/2
