As it happened: New Zealand Warriors v Canberra Raiders

Roger Tuivasa-Sheck of the Warriors takes on the Raiders defence. Photo / Getty

All the action as the Warriors made club history with three straight wins to start the season.

Warriors coach Stephen Kearney wants his side to punch through the Raiders defence rather than go around them in tonight's NRL clash in Canberra.

The Warriors are coming to grips with a more expansive and free-flowing style of play this season, but Kearney was frustrated by their tendency to shift the ball laterally in last week's entertaining win over the Titans.

The visitors will be tempted to keep the ball alive with second-phase play to shift Canberra's big forwards around at GIO Stadium, but while Kearney is happy to give his players free attacking licence, he'd prefer they find a better balance with the football.

"We've got a certain structure and it doesn't stray too far from the foundation of our game style, so we don't want to change too far from that," Kearney said.

"We probably didn't do that well enough last week and there was probably too much sideways movement.

"We played into their hands a little bit and needed to be a bit more direct and more penetrative when we're getting through the line, whereas we tried to go around them.

"We needed to be more direct, more penetrating, so we've got to balance that up."

The Warriors' revamped style comes after they were criticised for playing too conservatively last season, with Kearney placing an emphasis on structure and ball security in his first season in charge.

They finished with the best completion rate of any side (79.7 per cent), and the equal-fewest errors with 225 (9.4 per game), but their attack was predictable, as they threw the third-fewest offloads with 181 (7.5 per game), leaving them ranked 13th in points scored.