Diary Of A Warriors Fan
Remember the start of the season? When that new look Parramatta Eels side just looked a class above our Warriors lads, they looked enthusiastic, energetic, aggressive, skillful, tough and just looked like a new breed of an NRL side.
Well the Eels side that showed up to Mt Smart on Saturday night, wasn't the same with a few of their players missing ... but the revenge and the style of revenge inflicted by the Warriors gave me a smile as big as that full moon.
Damn, how slick were they? More importantly, how tough were they!? The Eels have some big lads, the likes of Pauli Pauli, Junior Paulo etc but the Warriors seemed to put them on their backside more often than not. This attitude, I'm not sure we've ever seen it before and it's awesome! It's not perfect and we're yet to see how they handle some imagination being thrown at them - the Eels were pooz, but the attitude is evident.
Loved seeing Sam Lousi back in the mix, plenty of size to go along with the mongrel of Jacob Lillyman. Given that Sione Lousi is still to come back, Sam Rapira will hopefully come back at some stage and with Ben Matulino on the field, we now have some depth. Hopefully we'll get all the guys back in action and we can push Matulino back out to an edge for the latter part of the season .... teams won't know how to defend that shit.
Shaun Johnson deserves a lot of praise and he'll probably get most of it, while Sam Tomkins clearly played his best game of the season. But they come in a package and with Chad Townsend also there, it gives them all a bit more space and time. There are options a plenty and defences are kept honest because you simply don't know who is going to be the main threat. Throw in to the mix Konrad Hurrell, Feleti Mateo and the rest of the guys who either hit the right hole or execute their duty perfectly and you have a team who are pretty hard to defend.
There's not much else more to it - the Warriors were on, the Eels were definitely not.
There is more to these Steve Matai rumours though. Holy cow I would love to see Matai come home. Yeah, who knows where he'll fit in with Hurrell, Ngani Laumape, Dane Nielsen etc all there but he'll provide that edge. The way he's been playing recently has been crazy. He's been sprinting in to D lines, making tough carries coming out of his own end and obviously scoring a few tries as well.
Nielsen is under contract for next season, so is Matai so it will be interesting to see it pan out. Can you think of a better player to mentor Hurrell and Laumape? I definitely can not. Matai would give these two a crazy ruthless edge. How it all fits, I have no idea. It's not like there's wing spots up for grabs either with David Fusitua becoming a certified firsty (first grader) and they've signed Matt Allwood from the Raiders as well. Who knows.
The Warriors are going good, they're going under the radar. I'm happy.
Ok, so maybe their not doing too good at that whole under the radar thing.