NRL: Warriors say week off not to blame

Neither the Warriors nor the Raiders would use a bye as an excuse for their round 10 losses. Photos / Getty Images

The Warriors and Canberra deny that any hangover from the week off for a bye caused their downfall in round 10 of the NRL.

The Warriors have been mulling over their halves combination for some weeks and yesterday made the decision to dump Nathan Fien from the 17 to play the Raiders in Canberra on Sunday afternoon and to let him go when his contract is done.

Joel Moon was the man nominated early in the season as first-choice five-eighth and he returns to the six jersey after two games at centre, where he played his initial NRL matches for Brisbane last season.

Halfback clearly remains unclear, with two alternatives named on the bench - Lewis Brown, 22, who has played his first two NRL games this season off the interchange, and Aaron Heremaia, 26, who is yet to make his Australian premiership debut but has experience with Widnes, Halifax and Leigh in England.

Patrick Ah Van returns to Brent Tate's right centre spot as the star number three continues recovery from knee surgery and that is the only change to the run-on 13 after the 34-12 loss to North Queensland last weekend. The Warriors dropped so much ball in the first half of that game that they had no fuel in the second and thus the score blew out with three tries to the Cowboys in the last 10 minutes.

The Canberra coach David Furner, whose team lost 46-6 to the Storm in Melbourne, eight tries to one, saidthat their second-half performance "bordered on embarrassing". Like Cleary, he pinpointed turnovers to a team with strike-power as their downfall.

All NRL teams must be named by 4pm Sydney time every Tuesday and so Furner listed 16 of the side that slumped to the Storm on Monday night, the one change at fullbackwhere David Milne returns after injury and teen Josh Dugan goes back to under-20s.