NZ Warriors 10
All of the pre-match talk had been about how the Warriors would meet fire with fire with Manly last night. Sadly, the Warriors showed it was just talk.
They wanted to get even with Manly prop Jason King after he knocked Micheal Luck unconscious with a dubious tackle in a pre-season match.
King fronted, putting another big hit on Jeremy Latimore, but the Warriors didn't.
What worked so well for them last weekend against the Roosters - unbridled intensity and creative spark - was missing last night.
They were efficient in a lot of things - they completed 16 of 16 sets in the opening stanza - but efficiency doesn't win a lot of football matches. In the end, it was all too easy for Manly.
The home side made significantly more metres (1433m to 1038m), were asked to make considerably fewer tackles (236-296) and scored four tries to two.
It was a vicious circle for the Warriors. They struggled to get out of their own half and often rounded out their sets with an indifferent kick, which meant they came under pressure and were asked to do too much work on defence, which blunted their ability to attack.
They simply didn't challenge the Sea Eagles enough.
Passes were laboured and they produced just one offload in the first 60 minutes of the match - even the unpredictable Feleti Mateo seemed to have forgotten to pack it into his carry-on baggage for the flight across the Tasman. Manly dished up 15 in the same period.
To make matters worse, makeshift centre Shaun Berrigan was forced from the field in the second half with a suspected broken left hand. They are already short of options at centre, with Jerome Ropati out of the season with a knee injury and Joel Moon badly out of form. Lewis Brown could do a job there, as could winger Krisnan Inu, but it would mean reshuffling personnel.
The Warriors actually scored the first points of the night in the 22nd minute, when Lewis Brown drove over from dummy-half, but they rarely threatened to add another until Elijah Taylor scored his first NRL try in the 77th minute.
It didn't help that they were forced to make two late changes, with Jacob Lillyman (hamstring) and Ukuma Ta'ai (knee) both ruled out of the match.
They also had issues defending their right edge. Simon Mannering and James Maloney seemed to be on a different wavelength and Manly scored two of their three first-half tries down this channel. Halves Kieran Foran and Daly Cherry-Evans identified this well and frequently attacked the Warriors' right-hand defence.
In reality, the Warriors did well to restrict Manly to just 20 points. They continued to fight, even though the game was well beyond their reach and the amount of work they were asked to do could have results in a much bigger toll.
Manly scored just once in the second spell, a 55th-minute try to Joe Galuvao, and only some good scrambling defence saved them at times.
The Warriors started to play some football at this point, pushing a few passes and running some better lines, but it was too little too late. They need to find that balance in the game between efficiency and being too adventurous. It's not something they've mastered too often this season, and they need to bring the sort of intensity they did against the Roosters.
The Warriors could come in for more scrutiny from the NRL after Latimore started even though Russell Packer was listed on the team sheet. Last week they were fined A$3000 for taking the field at Mt Smart three minutes late and another A$2000 when trainer Ruben Wiki got involved in a brief on-field altercation.
It doesn't get any easier for the Warriors, with a visit to league leaders Melbourne next Monday. But what will comfort Ivan Cleary's charges is that they have a lot of improvement in them.
That's real improvement, of course, Not in their pre-game chatter.
Manly 20 (M. Oldfield. M. Robertson, J. Buhrer, J. Galuvao tries; D. Cherry-Evans 2 gls) Warriors 10 (L. Brown, E. Taylor tries; J. Maloney gl). HT: 14-4.
