I dunno, this just feels like the sort of game that the Warriors lose. Without rhyme or reason, they somehow find a way to stumble and a Rabbitohs side that hasn't been that good this season but is now rolling out a fairly settled side could be a bit of a banana skin.

Did you feel it too? I really hate to say I told ya so, but I told y'all that Saturday's game against the Rabbitohs just wasn't going to go the way of the Warriors. You could label me as some sort of mystical witch doctor with fortune-telling ability, you could label me a grizzly Warriors fan who has seen this all too often before. Both are highly accurate.

This was a feeling based on a history of supporting the Warriors, hence many of y'all would have also felt this way leading into that game. There is also specific context to this current group of Warriors though that enhanced this feeling and once again this is where I splash some positive vibes on this loss as the flaws that were exposed by the Rabbitohs are what make me excited about the future.

Last week on the Gold Coast, there was an undeniable buzz. Scratch that, the buzz wasn't just undeniable as you could feel it through your telly screens. Our Warriors stood up, accepted the challenge of taking on a Gold Coast side buoyed by the signing of Jarryd Hayne and rolled out a performance that was fitting of the occasion. It would be tough to argue that this was an immense high.

Expecting the young brigade of the Warriors to maintain that high, playing at the same level in terms of effort, enthusiasm, skill, execution and focus, simply isn't realistic. We've watched many other Warriors teams struggle to maintain such a high level of play previously, so history was against this team and it was compounded by the fact that we still have many young players who just can't play at a genuine top-8 level over multiple weeks ... I mean, the more experienced players have struggled to do this in a Warriors jersey all season and in the past five years at least.

Of course, we should expect them to do that. They will be able to do that, this is all part of the learning curve that younger players face when adjusting to the weekly rigours of the NRL with an eye on joining the NRL's upper echelon. Winning a game or two every few weeks will see you finish as a mid-table NRL team, while winning back to back to back against tough opposition puts you in that upper echelon. The Warriors have foundations in the former and are nothing more, nothing less than a mid-table NRL team.

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This is best reflected in the work of Tuimoala Lolohea and David Fusitua. Two blokes who I love as the future of the Warriors, the mix-and-match pair of the Warriors backline and they both struggled against the Bunnies. Lolohea was either consistently out of position at fullback in deep defence, or he was made to look as though he was consistently out of position by Adam Reynolds' masterful kicking game. Either way, Lolohea was constantly chasing the footy and perhaps he showed a few signs of why Andrew McFadden had yanked him from fullback a few weeks ago.

Lolohea again got yanked and we need to remind ourselves that Lolohea will not be the long-term Warriors fullback ... so keep ya heads up. Sure, Lolohea can improve in his positioning with more experience but we've got Roger Tuivasa-Sheck waiting in the wings.

Fusitua missed 4 tackles on the Warriors right edge, Solomone Kata missed none on the left. Fusitua's certainly a beast carrying the footy (not as beastly as Greg Inglis), however with he and Ken Maumalo defending on the same edge, they will leak many more points down that edge through the rest of the season. Fusitua's 4 missed tackles don't make for good reading when you consider that Kata, Aaron Gray and Hymel Hunt (three other centres) combined to miss just a single tackle.

Kata's work stands head and shoulders above the rest of the young Warriors because he's been doing it consistently for much of the season; he's easily the most potent force the Warriors have. Keep an eye out for a special focus on Kata in a few days.

The rest of the young brigade weren't overly bad, it's just that they were unable to stand up to the challenge laid down by the Burgess brothers in the middle of the field ... after that high of last week. What highlighted this issue though - in defence of the youngsters - was that the older forwards collectively saved their worst game of the season (give or take) for a game they really needed to win, against a forward pack they could have dominated.

Jacob Lillyman: 48 minutes, 8 runs, 66m.
Bodene Thompson: 80mins, 9/78m.
Simon Mannering: 74mins, 8/67m.
Ben Matulino: 40mins, 7/60m.

The outlier is Ryan Hoffman's effort which is hugely impressive, considering where we started with Hoffman as skipper. Remember when Hoffman ran into a ruckus against Manly earlier in the season? It was a horrible look to see the captain get so flustered and reflected poorly on the club, now Hoffman has been rolling through some fine performances, leading from the front as skipper; 80mins, 15 runs, 152m, 4 tackle busts, 2 offloads, 2 line breaks.

In the preview, I hyped up the Mannering vs Sam Burgess battle and Mannering got swept aside by Burgess in rather embarrassing fashion. Burgess played 69 minutes, with 18 carries for 170m, 2 tackle busts, 25 tackles and an offload as he and George dominated the middle of the field, effectively blowing Mannering and the Warriors forward pack away.

If the Warriors had genuine hopes of making NRL Finals waves, their forward pack would be firing on all cylinders and sending fear throughout the NRL. Instead, Hoffman was the only forward to run for over 100m and a pack with its fair share of representative calibre players was made to look soft by a forward pack that was ripe for the picking.

Lolohea found himself scrambling and out of position thanks to his own in-experience and the craft of Reynolds, however Lolohea was always scrambling because the Rabbitohs were down that end of the field. The Rabbitohs swiftly marched down the field and benefited from quick play-the-balls down the Warriors end, meaning Lolohea was left to limit the effectiveness of Reynolds who had crisp early ball.

That's the fault of the forwards and it's an experienced forward pack who looked far too soft for the top-8. It's fine and dandy to look like a great forward pack one week, no point in looking soft the next week though.