Blake Green: Why the Warriors' game against the Penrith Panthers is make or break for our NRL season

Blake Green goes to ground against the Gold Coast Titans before the representative break. Photo / Photosport

COMMENT

As a team, we are entering make or break territory.

Every week is important in the NRL, but it's reaching crunch time for us and every game for the rest of the 2019 season will be like that.

We don't have much room to move — given our position on the ladder — and we need to start banking some wins, especially at home, where four defeats have really hurt us.

We can't control what happens across the rest of the competition, but we need to find a way to get the best out of ourselves and hopefully go on a run.

In 2018 we were winning a lot of the close matches — this year we have been edged in the narrow games.

It's unfortunate, but we can't change that now. Coach Stephen Kearney's message to the team has been pretty simple this week.

He's been disappointed with our ball control in the second half of our last two games, where we completed at around 50 per cent and put ourselves under a lot of pressure.

Instead of building our game and creating pressure we were a bit loose and tried to pull the trigger too early.

As a spine, we need to take a lot of responsibility over the next month.

Collectively we need to be on the same page, driving the right message to the team, so things can click.

Too many times this year we have mixed up clean passages of play with a loose period and we can't afford that in the coming weeks.

We did well against the Titans to come back and claim the win, after a poor start to the second half.

It was great to go into the representative period on a high, and we've had a benefit of a few extra sessions in the build-up to this game.

Last week I spent some time with the Kiwis Ferns, helping their halves with a few tips and ideas.

I really enjoyed it and it was refreshing to see how much they simply enjoy playing footy.

Warriors player Blake Green during a Kiwi Ferns training session held at Mt Smart. Photo / Photosport

And they were so open to learning and getting better.

Penrith will be a huge challenge this week.

It's funny — when we beat them a few weeks ago a lot of people said "it's only Penrith" but now they are one of the form teams in the competition, having won four of their last five games.

Their ability hasn't changed, but they now have a high level of confidence and belief. They are a big side, and very aggressive so we will need to be better than the last encounter because they certainly will be.

I'm proud of achieving my 150th NRL game this week. When I went to England eight years ago I didn't expect to be able to come back and rack up that many games.

The club arranged for my family to present my jersey this week which was a special moment, especially for my kids.

It's a nice milestone for me, but it will mean a lot more if we could rack up a few victories in the coming weeks.