Yesterday, our Warriors suffered their 11th straight defeat.

Sure, that's a factual statement but focusing on merely the result is what silly kiwi media do, not me, not The Niche Cache. The Warriors certainly lost their 11th game in a row across two seasons and their third loss in three games this season, however there was more than enough improvement shown yesterday to reinforce my belief that the Warriors are fine.

The Warriors are all good folks, don't stress ... like actually, stop stressing.

While I liked everything I heard from coach Andrew McFadden and the team after this loss to Melbourne, at no stage did I think the Warriors would actually win. There's a few elements to this with numero uno being that the Warriors were still far from their best, throw in the overlooked fact that they were playing the Storm who are the only team in the NRL right now with a perfect record.

You couldn't get two more different teams in terms of how their first two weeks had gone, the Storm are as slick as I've ever seen them, even without Billy Slater and the Warriors are still trying to figure out their strongest 17, let alone getting everyone firing at the same time.

The Storm weren't overly good yesterday though, there's enough experience and quality there to simply find a way to win games when they aren't playing so well. Coach Craig Bellamy will be filthy with 27 missed tackles to 19 from the Warriors and he'd be filthy that the Storm even came close to making more errors than the Warriors (10 vs 6). The difference between the two teams for me was Cooper Cronk, Cameron Smith and their influence on the Storm, a team who share a full understand of they want to play and how to win games.

Again, the Warriors clearly don't have those players or that understanding of their style of play.
We did however see a much improved Warriors performance, which when you consider the trajectory of their three performances so far, is encouraging. With each week has come a better display and for the Warriors to do so without Issac Luke was pretty damn interesting.

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Jazz Tevaga started in Luke's place and I thought Tevaga was the best Warriors player on the park besides Roger Tuivasa-Sheck. Tevaga is a defence-first player, capable of playing hooker or lock with the common factor being that both positions require him to defend in the middle. Tevaga is small enough to move across the turf quickly before chopping an opponent down, while also big enough to offer some whack in the tackle and ensure that every tackle is felt.

Tevaga is everything we as fans want to see in a Warriors player. Usually this results in fans/silly media bemoaning the lack of a tough-as-nails-Harry-hardcore Aussie like Kevin Campion or Michael Luck, Tevaga is that sort of player and he's from Papakura in South Auckland #BroCulture.

30 tackles and not a single missed tackle for Tevaga on debut.

There was also a slickness in Tevaga's work out of dummy half, without the dynamic running of Luke (which we haven't seen yet). Crisp passing, subtle movements around the ruck to keep the Storm's marker defence honest, 3 offloads and a big motor that saw him come back on the field after copping a few hefty knocks. Tevaga's tough, Tevaga's probably ranked ahead of Nathaniel Roache and I'm gonna go all out and say that I want Tevaga to start, with Luke coming off the bench to add some spark.

Tevaga does the tough stuff, Luke gets to only worry about running the footy at the back-end of either half against tiring defenders. Luke hasn't exactly earned the right to start, so why hand it to him on a silver platter?

Luckily (without Tuivasa-Sheck the Warriors wouldn't have been in the game against Brisbane, nor would they have against Melbourne) the Warriors do have Mr 200 at fullback. Ignore all the talk from silly media about Tuivasa-Sheck having a good game; this is the third game in a row that Tuivasa-Sheck has ran for 200m, Mr 200 does that before breakfast.

Then Tuivasa-Sheck eats tackle-busts for brekky, he had 5 against the Tigers, 3 vs Brisbane and 8 yesterday. The thing about Tuivasa-Sheck is how busy he is (22 carries, the most of any player yesterday) and how tough he is. Tuivasa-Sheck isn't taking carries out wide, hitting plenty of space, a lot of Tuivasa-Sheck's carries come one pass off the ruck, running into a group of Storm forwards. Tuivasa-Sheck's pet play though is breaking a forward's ankles around the ruck, keep an eye out for that, just like what he did to Kenny Bromwich.

While Tuivasa-Sheck does take a lot of tough carries, especially coming out of Warriors' territory, he's also an obvious weapon on attack, even if he's not stepping five blokes to score. To set up Tuimoala Lolohea in the corner, the Warriors ran a simple second-man play that relies on Tuivasa-Sheck's speed as well as his decision making/passing ability as he quickly feeds Blake Ayshford, then Lolohea scores.

Bodene Thompson confuses Blake Green just long enough for Tuivasa-Sheck to get on the outside of Green.

Up front, Jesse Bromwich got the wood over Ben Matulino which summed up the difference between the two teams yesterday. Matulino was great with 124m off 16 carries (7.75m per carry), a tackle bust, 18 tackles and 3 offloads in 56 minutes but Bromwich was far better with 155m off 19 carries (8.15m per carry), a try assist, 3 tackle busts, 29 tackles and 3 offloads in 71 minutes.

In a game where no other forward really stood out (Ryan Hoffman was the only other forward to run for more than 100m from either team), Bromwich showed why he's the best prop in the game. Bromwich got through a mammoth shift of 71 minutes, something I struggle to see Matulino do and this wouldn't be such a problem if the props with the most impact in the Warriors actually played more minutes.

This has been evident in all three games this season, mainly with Sam Lisone who has been our best forward but spent much of the first two rounds on the bench. Albert Vete only played 24 minutes, Charlie Gubb only played 22 minutes and James Gavet only played 21 minutes. All three added something when they came on, they brought energy and enthusiasm which we need to see more of.

I want to see more minutes from Vete, Gubb, Gavet and Lisone when he's back, we don't need Jacob Lillyman playing 51 minutes, nor do we need Simon Mannering playing 80 minutes when any of those younger middle forwards can give Mannering a break for 10 minutes or so.

Four of the Storm's back five ran for over 100m, while only Tuivasa-Sheck passed 100m for the Warriors. That's what happens when there's no Manu Vatuvei, or Konrad Hurrell but I was pretty impressed by Blake Ayshford and have come to be comfortable that Hurrell could have played his last game as a Warrior.

It's important to remember that the Warriors have competed strongly against Brisbane and Melbourne while clearly not playing at their best. Brisbane are the best team in the NRL while Melbourne are the only undefeated team and sit at the top of the table, we haven't even seen the Shaun Johnson x Jeff Robson really fire yet and the Warriors have hung in their against really good teams.

Cool ya jets, our Warriors are building into their season.