Diary Of An Aotearoa Warriors Fan: 2-0 vs Dragons This Season
RTS = Roger Try-Saver.
Having seen the effort and intensity that Aotearoa Warriors showcased in their 18-12 win over St George Illawara Dragons in Wollongong, this isn't a case of where has that been over the past few months. The Warriors laid it all out there to snatch a much-needed away win over a desperate Dragons team and those types of performances are bloody difficult to replicate every week.
We knew the Warriors had this in them, because we saw it at Mt Smart when the Warriors handed the Dragons their first loss of the season. That was a game that put the 2018 Warriors defence on the radar and they repeated the dose to stifle the Dragons attack yet again. This win felt a wee bit more important though and while we knew that a full-strength Warriors team (sans Tohu Harris) can be a really good footy team, to see it in round 21 at a ground they always struggle at, was lovely.
Now we know, that in tough, high-pressure footy games the Warriors can hang in there through their defence. Both Dragons cam directly from Warriors errors and both errors inexplicably came from David Fusitu'a, who had a elongated brain fart to start the second half. Fair play to the Dragons for making the Warriors pay, but the general intensity, skill and effort in the Warriors defence to constantly repel opposition raids was nek level.
The skill comes through the Warriors wrestle and the care taken to get the Dragons players on their backs enabled the Warriors to consistently set their defensive line. The Dragons had an average play-the-ball speed of 3sec, faster than the Warriors 3.3sec, but it felt as though whenever the Dragons got a bit of a roll on, the Warriors could sit them down, roll them on to their backs and re-set the defence.
From there, we had the beautiful jamming defence on display. That's made possible through slow ruck speed and the likes of Gerard Beale, Isaiah Papalii, Shaun Johnson, Blake Green and Adam Blair identified the key ball-player and jammed him up. Blair played the whole game at right edge, with Mannering in the middle and Blair's efforts reminded me of Peta Hiku earlier in the season; missed tackles suck, but aren't super detrimental if the team's defence is humming.
Blair missed 6 tackles and some were less than average efforts, the Warriors missed 40 tackles as a team as well, Dragons missed just 32. It's kinda tricky to tackle some of these NRL players though, Matt Dufty goes alright and Tyson Frizell is an absolute monster, so missed tackles will happen and it's up to the team to how they absorb those missed. This Warriors team, with its mobile forward pack works hard from the inside covering inside shoulders and there are always lads offering cover defence; when the ball goes past them, they keep pushing to wrap around and cover the jammers, or shut down space on the inside.
That's the difference between the Warriors winning a game via their defence and getting smoked. The missed tackles come in either instance, but here, vs Dragons in Wollongong, there was always a Warriors player covering up a miss. I'd hope that the Warriors can do that every week, but they won't be able to maintain that energy through every remaining game and they might not have to if they get more than the 46 percent possession they had in this game.
I reckon the Warriors are still developing, growing as a team and another off-season will reinforce their system and they'll get better at doing this consistently. They personnel is also important and I don't think it's a coincidence that this defensive display came with Papalii and Blair playing big minutes on the edges, Mannering and Tevaga working through the middle and the other middle forwards rotating that third spot; James Gavet only played 19mins, Bunty Afoa only 26mins, Leivaha Pulu 20mins and I was having nightmares of Ben Hunt ghosting past Sam Lisone from that Mt Smart game, as Lisone got his 11mins.
Those quick rotations, based around a core of Papali'i, Mannering and Blair playing 70+ minutes and Tevaga's 65mins, ensure that there's a fresh middle forward going hard. What do those core forwards have in common? Mobility and hustle. They are always showing up on the inside, always plugging holes.
Then you also have the best defensive fullback in the NRL and general freak Roger Tuivasa-Sheck; 21runs/239m, 68 post contact metres, 2 line breaks, 8 tackle busts, 1 offload and a try saver on Jordan Pereira. No need to go on and on about how amazing Tuivasa-Sheck is and the leader that he is quickly becoming.
21 runs, sets the tone for the work of the outside backs. Ken Maumalo had 22 runs and Fusitu'a had 15 runs. Any conversation about Tuivasa-Sheck's work running that footy, needs to be accompanied by Maumalo's 208m from 22 runs and a whopping 89pcm. When effectively at full-strength, all the components of the Warriors compliment each other and it's not just a case of the outside backs taking lots of carries to help the forwards; these guys are either brutally dynamic or poke their heads through via swift footwork.
No one is really expecting Gerard Beale to average 12.11m/run are they? Beale had 9runs/109m along with plenty of strong, jammy defence and is steadily becoming a key player at right centre, keeping Peta Hiku out of the team.
So much defence does limit the impact of the halves, on top of that though we had tries come via a Papali'i offload, a Tevaga offload and then Blake Green set up Kata's second try with a delightful cut out pass. The point here is that Green and Johnson weren't the stars of the show, they simply did their jobs and the skill from the entire team created opportunities to get down field or score tries. For Green, if that meant having a run and putting on the old man shimmy, that's exactly what he did.
There is something so satisfying about a win that barely features Johnson, who had 8 runs vs Green's 13 runs. This isn't specifically about Johnson though, it goes for the halves combo as they didn't need to run through their different plays, or create some magic. The defence was great, but the Warriors still scored 18 points without a huge influence from Johnson and to a lesser extent Green. This was a Warriors win in which all the elements of the team came together to get the job done.
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Peace and love 27.