What did we learn from the Aotearoa Warriors defeating Brisbane Broncos? That these Warriors are lingering, not quite loitering with prickly intentions but lingering through the chaos and confusion to grab a win and move on to the next week. The Warriors lingered in that win over the Broncos and continue to battle through a weird season thus far, taking them into a clash against Gold Coast Titans tonight.

The Titans feel like they are in a similar spot to the Broncos, although the Titans can play and merely exist with much more freedom than their neighbours due to the circus around the Broncos. Don't expect the Titans to do the same as they are cruising along at their own pace and that presents an intriguing gauge-game for the Warriors in assessing their fringe top-eight credentials.

Correct bro: the Warriors are 2 points outside the top-eight, heck they are four points away from 6th.

Do the Warriors reckon they are better than the Titans, with the ruthlessness to showcase that? Or are the Warriors on the Titans level at the moment? Despite all the shenanigans of the 2020 season, the Warriors sit in the middle of the bottom-eight and while a win over the Titans won't be reason to get overly giddy, it will at least settle some negative vibes stemming from that group sniffing around the wooden spoon.

Everything's fairly settled with the starting 17 named by coach Todd Payten, including the standard practice of Tohu Harris named on an edge. The funk comes with Karl Lawton named in the middle and while Lawton could provide some Jazz Tevaga type of mobility and bounciness to the middle, I expect Lawton will start on an edge with Harris playing through the middle.

Tevaga is back and how coach Payten deploys Tevaga will be noteworthy considering Tevaga's history of being chopped between hooker and middle forward. Wayde Egan has played 80 minutes in three of his seven games this season, two of those have been his last two outings and that perhaps suggests that Lawton and Tevaga will both be used as forwards.

I won't go all in on this idea just yet but having two super mobile (and smaller) forwards could be useful in switching the Warriors style up, especially with Jack Hetherington's surprising speed and intent running the footy. Hetherington offered a fair bit last weekend in his 42mins with 12 runs for 107m @ 8.91m/run along with four offloads, chuck in a (surely not sustainable) average play-the-ball speed of 1.91 seconds; anything under 3secs is great, very rarely do players average sub-2 seconds.

There is an avenue for Tevaga to be used as we've seen before - bouncing around the ruck, offloading, passing, causing mayhem. Now more than ever it feels like this Warriors forward pack is aligned with Tevaga's style of play and I generally reckon that this type of Warriors forward pack could be better suited to post-lockdown NRL footy.

The Warriors have also re-signed Jamayne Taunoa-Brown until the end of 2022 during the week as well. Everyone's after a high profile Warriors signing and the lack of a 'big name' is often used against the Warriors by the headline grabbers, so when a bloke comes to Mt Smart on a trial deal and then plays eight games in his debut season there's less buzz around the value of nifty business.

A key factor in NRL salary cap management is getting value from first or second year players - those players who are on their first or second NRL deal. There has been far more action at this end of the roster with the Warriors than their top end and there has been a concentrated effort from the Warriors when recruiting from Australia to skew towards younger, fringe NRL players.

Taunoa-Brown is perhaps the best example of this as his contributions on the field have gone far beyond his 'train and trial' status prior to the summer slog. The Warriors recruited a bloke out of reserve grade in Queensland and he's played all eight games, playing 40+ minutes in his last three games. Sure, this is impacted by the injury toll and various other factors but as far as value and identifying talent goes this is a tick for the Warriors.

Hey what's up guys? I'm back with another episode of Talk Of The Town! On todays episode I catch up with two of my team mates Blayke Brailey and Toby Rudolf ...

Given that Toby Rudolf is highly unlikely to be coming to the Warriors now (looks/sounds like he loves the Sharks), getting immense value for money with Taunoa-Brown is useful moving forward. Now it's all about development for Taunoa-Brown and having him play consistently can only be good, especially as the middle forward stocks strengthen with players returning from injuries

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Peace and love.