Suck it up and keep it movin'. The dust as settled after the loss to Penrith and in reflecting on that loss, I'm even more convinced that there's no need for any doomsday prep or over-reactionary drama to that result. Round 10 was wild and a lot of crazy shit happened, unfortunately our Warriors got torched in an onslaught and all that matters now is how this team performs against the Dragons.

Penrith caused all sorts of problems for the Warriors out on the edges and while they did manage to storm down field with ease against a Warriors middle sans Simon Mannering, their intent to hit edges early and execution in doing did the damage. And that was before Tyrone Peachey came on, which only amplified the situation as he's lethal against tired forwards and after chasing Penrith around, Peachey's injection into the game was tu meke.

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Do the Dragons have the same attacking prowess on their edges? Not quite and perhaps more importantly, they don't have the same desire to push the footy and throw caution to the wind. With Nathan Cleary pulling the strings, Penrith had Matt Moylan and Bryce Cartwright adding their funk to Penrith's edge attack and without Josh Dugan or Gareth Widdop, the Dragons should struggle to pose the same threat.

Where the Dragons lack in creativity, they've got plenty of oomph through the middle and we simply have to hope that with many Warriors forwards looking for a contract, that they prove their worth. James Gavet and Jacob Lillyman worked through a nice patch of form before the representative round, both are playing for contracts and come up against two of the best middle forwards of 2017 in Russell Packer and Paul Vaughan.

How Stephen Kearney juggles the minutes of his middle forwards is low key crucial in this game as it feels as though Gavet and Lillyman have been on the cusp of their max output. That's especially the case when you consider that Sam Lisone, Ligi Sao and Ben Matulino will come off the bench and there is no shortage of middle forwards ready to go. Is it really that bad if Lisone and Sao play 35 minutes each instead of 30?

The waters get a bit murky when pondering Bunty Afoa, who will start at lock. Afoa can't be expected to play 80 minutes - although he probably can - and how Afoa's presence influences how the middle forwards are rotated will be intriguing. There needs to be a balance in size and mobility through the middle, especially against this Dragons pack as Vaughan moves like a winger, de Belin can offload and then you've got someone like Leeson Ah Mau coming off the bench who has fancy footwork. There's variety in the Dragons middle and if the Warriors get the rotation wrong, leaving fatigued players on, having too much/not enough size or not enough mobility, then they'll struggle to slow the Dragons down and win that grind.

Through their powerful outside backs, the Warriors can make decent metres. Those powerful outside backs don't defend in the middle though and the Warriors could be found lacking in size/whack on defence through the middle.

Here's hoping Ryan Hoffman was told that Caspar doesn't exist on the footy field as he's lining up against Tyson Frizell. Hoffman was another player to find some good form before rep-round, but last week he generally looked confused and he's a nice reflection of where I'm at with the Warriors; played well before, sucked last week, need to get back to base this week.

Think back to that Anzac Test, when Aotearoa couldn't put any points on Australia. Those Aussies defended as well as you'd expect them to, however Aotearoa made life fairly easy for them as they skipped through their passing motions only to give Roger Tuivasa-Sheck the footy out on an edge with not a whole lot to work with. After a few sets of this, I wondered how Tuivasa-Sheck, Kieran Foran and Shaun Johnson would be feeling as they would have watched their attacking confidence ditch them as nothing worked.

Against Penrith, similar signs were there as Tuivasa-Sheck would end up with the footy after a backline move and have no openings, no extra man or no error from the defence. Before rep-round when the Warriors looked somewhat dangerous, they'd roll through these sweeping backline moves and the work on the inside would create an opening out wider, where Tuivasa-Sheck, Foran or Johnson would scoot through or lay on a pass.

So what's doing with their attack now? I'll keep a close eye on this against the Dragons. Penrith aren't great defensively and the Warriors had no footy in the second half, so it's hard to judge their attack from that game. The Dragons are a solid defensive team, but even more so now that they don't have their two major attacking weapons, so it's going to take a slick Warriors effort to put some points on.

A hypothesis is that Australia pushed up and across against Aotearoa, so without actually using the decoys through the middle to keep the defence honest, they just slid over and gambled on the fact that they ball would eventually get to Tuivasa-Sheck on the edge. No NRL team will defend as good as Australia, however I do believe that we might have seen a minor negative aspect of having the Kiwi spine as the Warriors spine and vice-versa.

Australia only needed to watch Warriors games to suss out their habits and now we're working with a spine that had their confidence shot to pieces.

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