Cowboys 34
Warriors 12
Warriors fans at Mt Smart yesterday might take some solace from the fact that coach Ivan Cleary was as disgusted with the team's performance as anyone. Cleary said the clumsy slump to the North Queensland Cowboys was "just not acceptable".
But he has little room to move in terms of bringing in other players because the team that ran out at Mt Smart yesterday were very close to the top side.
Only two "regulars" were missing: prop Evarn Tuimavave, who played 80 minutes for feeder side the Auckland Vulcans as they lost 42-12 to Balmain on Saturday, and centre Brent Tate, who continues to make a good recovery from knee surgery but won't be back any time soon.
Cleary could readjust the halves to bring Joel Moon back to five-eighth, with both Stacey Jones and Nathan Fien struggling to establish any control yesterday.
But that was because of the domination of the Cowboys' pack.
Only their fullback Matt Bowen made more ground than lock Luke O'Donnell, who ran for 148m, Matt Scott making 126m as best prop on the field and Carl Webb, Antonio Kaufusi and young Auckland James Tamou each gathering around 80m.
Tamou, playing in just his third NRL game, spent 10 minutes in the sinbin.
Steve Price had an unusually short 99m, Sam Rapira 76m, Russell Packer had a short time on the ground and just 20m.
"It was ordinary in pretty much all departments," Cleary said.
"We couldn't control the ball. In defence we weren't good enough.
"What we did today was poor. It never makes it easy when you start badly and you're continually turning the ball over. All facets of the game were poor," he said.
To start, they did exactly what they planned not to all week and let Johnathan Thurston run. He crabbed to send O'Donnell in then produced a simple change of direction and stepped into a huge hole to score near the posts.
That underlined the fact that the Warriors' minds - for whatever reason - were not on the job. There appeared to be little talk in defence and so the Cowboys backs profited with tries to left centre Willie Tonga off Thurston's kick, right centre Ash Graham from a runaround, wing Ben Farrar after Bowen delivered a back-flip pass then Bowen himself who found another Grand Canyon.
"We all played our part [in the loss]," said Price. "We just didn't give ourselves a chance. Most of the time they didn't have to work for what they got. We didn't nail our opportunities.
"We've gone back a fair few steps."
By halftime the Warriors had made nine errors to the Cowboys' two, the visitors had forced two goal-line drop-outs and the Warriors none, the tackle count was 194 to the home side's 129.
As rain settled in after the kick-off the Warriors' handling continued to let them down and by the end the error count was 14-7, their completion rate was 28/45 to the Cowboys' 33/55 and so they made 300 tackles to the Cowboys' 219.
You just can't win on those stats.
At least there were no injuries. And next opponent the Raiders have a shorter turnaround after playing tonight in Melbourne.
