KEY POINTS:
The Warriors signing of Cowboys and Queensland backrower Jacob Lillyman yesterday does not complete their recruitment drive.
Chief executive Wayne Scurrah confirmed the club is still in the marketplace but would not reveal the numbers of players they were looking for nor the positions they want to fill.
"It wouldn't be fair on the players in those positions now," Scurrah said.
Lillyman, 24, has played 62 games for North Queensland since 2003 and four State of Origin games from 2006 to this year.
Lillyman said the fact other former Cowboys Micheal Luck and Nathan Fien along with Origin stars Steve Price and Brent Tate had crossed the Tasman and were enjoying their time in Auckland helped his decision.
Coach Ivan Cleary said Lillyman was a top-quality defender with a great work ethic.
Lillyman's signing on a two-year deal balances the departure of Warriors veterans Logan Swann and Wairangi Koopu. It will keep the number of Aussies at the club at eight, as wing Michael Crockett departs.
The concern is that his forte is defence, as it is with Micheal Luck and Simon Mannering who will be the other regular backrowers for 2009. It's something coach Ivan Cleary is aware of. Work with the two home-grown backrow talents Sonny Fai, 20, and Ben Matulino, 19, is concentrated on improving their attack. Both are big and raw-boned, capable of getting off-loads away in the tackle but wary of increasing their error rate.
Matulino admitted he wasn't expecting to make a big line-break against Cronulla on debut last weekend. "I was very nervous. That was a bit of a surprise [busting the line], I didn't know what to do once I got through." He did all right, setting up their one try for Jerome Ropati.
Wing Manu Vatuvei said the fracture of his fibula had healed well, he was confident it would be OK against Manly and he was looking forward to ending the frustration of watching from the sideline.
Meanwhile the Manly club said sales of tickets for a dinner to "farewell a legend" did not signal the end of the career of their veteran backrower Steve Menzies, 34, who is in his 15th season and at 334 games is closing in on Terry Lamb's all-time appearance record of 349 games. Menzies has said he will make a decision in the next few weeks about retiring or going to England. His fear was playing a season, or even half a season, too long.
