League: Stable Warriors win four from four

Nathan Fien of the Warriors (facing) hugs Brent Webb after he scored the match winning try against the Penrith Panthers at Mt Smart Stadium. Sandra Mu / Getty Images

Warriors 28 Penrith 22

Use of a stable team has become a key for the Warriors as they string wins together for the first time since their finals run of 2003.

After grinding down a State of Origin- and injury-depleted Penrith Panthers side at Mt Smart Stadium on Saturday night, they now face a Bulldogs team with its two star props backing up from the mid-week interstate contest.

Warriors skipper Steve Price will return for the game at Stadium Australia next Sunday to again face the Blues' Mark O'Meley and Willie Mason, so Evarn Tuimavave will drop back to the bench and Sam Rapira will drop off it. But those should be the only changes to the team that now have four victories from their past four games.

The Warriors are comfortable playing against the Bulldogs' style and there is no reason they cannot win there and back at home over struggling Parramatta before taking their second bye mid-July.

Until that is done, though, there is little point in raising hopes of making the top-eight playoffs. A meagre 8723 watched the Warriors on Saturday evening when there was no sporting competition live or on TV.

That suggests either that followers have given up hope of a playoff place or that they are tired of the annual dramas surrounding the club and were voting against the ongoing player turnover and the release of fullback Brent Webb.

The club is set to address the latter with the signing of Eels fullback Wade McKinnon expected any day. Epalahame Lauaki has re-signed.

There were glimpses on Saturday of the confident Warriors of 2002-03 as they carved holes in the Panthers and ran in long-range tries. There were also glimpses of the worst years as they dropped balls, threw some silly off-loads and took wrong options. But the Panthers did plenty of that too, probably more.

Penrith coach John Lang was not unhappy with his team's effort, but said the Warriors were the better side over 80 minutes. He said hooker and stand-in captain Luke Priddis was disappointed in himself for taking wrong options.

Warriors coach Ivan Cleary admitted it was not their best game but was pleased with the character shown in regaining the front after their early lead was overtaken.

He admitted to some nervousness about how they would back up after the 66-0 win over Souths the previous weekend and because of the depletion of the Panthers team.

The Warriors scored the first try when they ran the ball on the last tackle and Simon Mannering chipped through, Preston Campbell nudging the ball to touch to give them a scrum feed near Penrith's line. Twice they went down the short side before Mannering scored.

Campbell made another error in lofting the last-tackle kick straight up. It was taken by Danny Galea, who off-loaded it to Mannering and the Warriors centre sprinted 70m and shoved off the cover to score try two.

Then the Warriors produced a string of errors to let the Panthers in twice, possession from a turnover by wing Patrick Ah Van turned to points.

Later, Rapira failed to play the ball properly, Sione Faumuina knocked on and the Warriors were penalised for a strip, so Penrith camped in their territory before putting centre Lee Hookey over. The visitors led 14-10 at the break.

The Warriors had done far more tackling. But they were making more line-breaks, the Panthers the ones missing tackles.

Left wing Manu Vatuvei smashed through multiple defenders to make a 40m break before the first points of the second half to stand-in captain Ruben Wiki. As Mannering's tries had been preceded by good work from hooker Nathan Fien, it was half Grant Rovelli who did the step and shuffle to beat the defence and send Wiki clear.

The Warriors should have scored again soon after when Jerome Ropati broke the line but Tony Martin couldn't take the last pass.

There was the opportunity for Ropati to have a shocker on Saturday - he knocked on the game kick-off in front of his posts.

But he too backed up from recent good performances to provide a threat on attack and solid defence.

Martin and Ah Van redeemed themselves when Ah Van took Penrith's chip to goal at knee height and broke past the defence, finding the former outside and when Martin goaled from the sideline it was 22-14.

Priddis snuck under the tacklers from dummy-half to bring the Panthers back to 22-20.

But the home side regrouped, forced a goal-line drop-out and kept pressure on. Rovelli had a dab, Fien had a dab and then put fullback Webb in near the posts.

Cleary praised his side "one to 17", and agreed that the key players in one, six, seven and nine were all running consistently now, backing up the good metre gain the forwards had produced through the season.

"When your key positions are doing well you give yourselves a chance to win very week."

Cleary couldn't work out why the crowd numbers were down and said all the team could do was their best.