Shaun Johnson got injured, Nathan Cleary told Johnson; 'bruh, kick back'.

Now I'm excited to see Kieran Foran take control and I low key reckon that the balance offered by Foran, Ata Hingano, Issac Luke and Roger Tuivasa-Sheck could be funky.

But what about the actual game against Penrith?

When having a think about that, I unfortunately came back around to Cleary. With 60 minutes gone, the Warriors had a sneaky lead, mainly due to Corey Harawira-Naera's yellow card. They scored a couple tries in that 10 minute period and put themselves in a position to close out the game, only for Cleary to cause all sorts of ruckus.

I'd counter my own hype about Foran/Hingano by pointing out that Johnson left the field in the 61st minute, so the inability to close the game out fell on Foran, or more notably the Warriors defence that simply fell apart. Literally creating attacking opportunities for Penrith.

There was a set-for-set element to this period, headlined by Cleary putting up four consecutive bombs, high into Manu Vatuvei Stadium's atmosphere and directed Ken Maumalo's way. I viewed this as a symbolic coming of age for Maumalo as we've seen impressive development from Vatuvei's prodigy this season and Maumalo then ate four bombs up with ease, he didn't look sketchy at all.

For those who need reminding; Vatuvei and the Warriors found themselves parting ways because Maumalo has stepped up to take over from Vatuvei. The OG deserves immense respect for leading Maumalo to that point and Maumalo deserves respect for improving so quickly.

Cleary's first try came after Foran had done his job in pegging Penrith to their own 20m line with a kick and a strong kick-chase. Penrith worked their way to the middle of the field and for no reason at all, were graced with a one-marker situation:

This was a normal tackle with Luke going low and James Gavet going high, yet for whatever reason, Luke didn't get into marker and gave up on the play. With Gavet as the only marker, Sione Katoa put a slick no-looker on Gavet to Reagan Campbell-Gillard, who then ran at Ligi Sao with Dylan Edwards on his inside. Had Luke been at marker, there would have been enough Warriors clutter to stop this.

Luke is again the culprit to some extent in the next Cleary try. Initially it looks like Luke has rushed up ahead of his inside defenders and created space for Cleary:

I'm not so sure this is all Luke's fault as Bodene Thompson and Blake Ayshford - who defend outside Luke - have pushed up with him. This is a nice example of line-speed and all three get up to put pressure on the jokers they are marking and forcing Cleary to deviate from the move he was gonna execute. But because Lisone and Matulino hadn't followed suit, they were a few metres behind their outside men and Cleary sees this, puts a little shimmy on Lisone and away he goes.

Lisone was left clutching at Casper.

And that leads us on to a lack of energy from the blokes who usually take on that responsibility. Lisone played 40 minutes and only had 7 carries for 54m, compare that to James Gavet who played 42 minutes and had 11 carries for 115m, or Penrith's Leilani Latu who played 30 minutes with 7 carries for 65m or James Fisher-Harris' 9 carries for 88m in 42 minutes.

Lisone was absent when his team desperately needed his oomph, especially in the period when Latu, Fisher-Harris and Regan Campbell-Gillard were running rampant. This was a Panthers forward pack that had James Tamou only playing 38 minutes and Trent Merrin only playing 26mins. Their young forwards had to stand up and dominate the middle for Cleary, all Penrith parties involved played their role to perfection.

There's a weird difference in run-metres for this game as the Warriors had similar usage of the footy to Penrith (150 runs vs 159) but conceded a lot more metres; 1,232m vs 1,491m. The major difference is in the number of dummy-half runs, or who those dummy-half runs are coming from. The Warriors had 7 dh-runs and Luke was responsible for 6 of them (Kata's try came from the other dh-run), while Penrith had 25 dh-runs and Mitch Rein/Sione Katoa combined for just 7 of those 25 dh-runs.

18 of Penrith's dh-runs came from their outside backs.

Penrith's outside backs all have speed as their major attribute, while the Warriors lean towards size. My view of this is that getting out of dummy-half with speed doesn't allow the opposing team's defence to push up, instead the defence is put on the back foot by a nimble outside back. Maumalo, Kata, Blake Ayshford and David Fusitua are strong runners, but they are given the ball via a pass and defenders know that they can't let Maumalo or Kata load up, so they get off their line quickly and put bodies in front of them.

This is amplified for Tuivasa-Sheck. Opposition teams know all about Tuivasa-Sheck's freakish running ability and they pay respect to that, requiring three/four defenders forming a wall to stop Tuivasa-Sheck. A defensive wall can be formed because they can telegraph that Tuivasa-Sheck will get the ball, one pass off the ruck.

There were no dh-runs from Tuivasa-Sheck against Penrith, despite the obvious threat that Tuivasa-Sheck's speed and footwork offers. He's fast enough to evade the markers, then he can put footwork on a stranded defender behind the ruck - stranded because he doesn't have his wall-homies there and he knows he's gonna get whacked.

Tyrone Peachey hasn't played a whole lot of hooker this season, yet he leads Penrith in dh-runs and it's his speed that makes him such a threat. Luke leads the Warriors with dh-runs (95), while Tuivasa-Sheck has just 17 dh-runs; if you took 20 dh-runs off Luke and gave them to Tuivasa-Sheck, it'd be a nightmare to stop. Using Tuivasa-Sheck one-pass off the ruck just doesn't feel efficient as he's spending a lot of time running at forwards who know the drill, instead of getting into space where his assets are best used.

Kata's return was good.

I'm still a bit meh on Bunty Afoa; 66mins, 5 runs for 42m, 34 tackles, 1 penalty conceded, 4 missed tackles (most of any Warrior). Afoa was replaced by Sao, with Simon Mannering spending the last 14 minutes on the left edge.

'Warriors gotta offload!' 10 offloads vs Penrith's 5 offloads and the Warriors lost.

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