Aotearoa Warriors Diary: Raided Canberra, Defended Mt Smart
Canberra Raiders join the Cowboys, Bulldogs and Sharks in losing twice to NZ Warriors this season. The golden-pointer at Mt Smart stadium on Friday night wasn't just another win over Raiders in the NRL as the NSW Cup Warriors also grabbed their second win over Raiders this season, also thanks to a droppie to seal victory.
Since losing to Panthers at Magic Round, the last nine games have produced eight 20+ point performances from Warriors. The only game in which they didn't score 20+ points during this period was the loss to Rabbitohs and Warriors now enter a bye week, their last bye of the season.
Both Raiders teams presented funky challenges for Warriors. Obviously it would have been fabulous for Warriors to dominate Raiders right through until the final whistle, yet there is no shame in giving up a lead to this Raiders outfit. Every player in the Raiders is hard to tackle, capable of offloading and shuffling the footy into space. Whether it's all the Kiwi-NRL chaps, lads like Josh Papali'i and Elliott Whitehead or that Corey Horsburgh bloke; Raiders are powerful and unpredictable.
Raiders have 176 offloads this season. Warriors have 130 and they have played an extra game. That's a basic example of the different playing styles.
The Raiders NSW Cup had a bunch of experienced players, coming up a young Warriors group. Veteran halfback Matt Frawley only played the first half before sliding into NRL 18th-man duties and Raiders didn't score any second half tries. Warriors were down 0-18 and two tries in the second half got them back in the mix before Ronald Volkman hit the winning field goal.
Warriors leaders in NSW Cup are Michael Sio and Kalani Going at the moment. It's still likely that finals footy features more experienced players, unless the youngsters are rolling along and winning games. Ben Farr seems like a veteran presence and he is 22-years-old. Setu Tu has played lots of reserve grade footy and he's only 24-years-old. Along with all the blokes in the 19-25 bracket, most of whom are in their first full season of NSW Cup, three Under 19 SG Ball lads were in the team vs Raiders; Tanner Stowers-Smith, Selumiela (Leka) Halasima and Jacob Laban.
So when Tom Ale drops down to NSW Cup, he quickly becomes a leader and someone who should be shining in a greater role. Ale has played 40 minutes in just two of his 18 NRL games and didn't play 30+ minutes in his last six games. What did Ale do in his first game of NSW Cup this season?
57mins, 15 runs - 164m @ 10.9m/run, 1 tackle bust, 2 offloads, 29 tackles @ 88%.
Ale will benefit from this workload which was probably why coach Andrew Webster put Ale in NSW Cup. There also seemed to be a plan in the NRL to counter how Raiders move the footy around, bouncing from sideline to sideline as runners. Mitchell Barnett started at prop, bumping Bunty Afoa to the bench and this bumped Ale to NSW Cup.
Dylan Walker, Bayley Sironen and Josh Curran joined Afoa on the bench. These lads aren't props, but Walker plays like one and rolled through his normal rotation, conveniently around the 20 minute mark when Marata Niukore left the field injured. Walker went middle, Barnett moved to edge and Curran came on in the 33rd minute (replacing Tohu Harris who continues to be managed well).
Sironen didn't enter the game until the 46th minute and Afoa came on in the 69th minute. These moves coincided with the Raiders comeback and perhaps the tweaked rotation enabled a Raiders comeback, but having mobile forwards and a fresh Afoa also helped Warriors limit the comeback damage. Bumping Ale to NSW Cup and having a bench of mobile, versatile forwards helped Warriors chase Raiders around, as well as being fresh enough to think clearly and execute the winning plays under fatigue.
That is amplified by having 46% possession and making 418 tackles to the Raiders' 343 tackles. Even though Harris played just 54mins, he made 50 tackles @ 94%. Jackson Ford (51 tackles @ 89%) and Wayde Egan (55 tackles @ 92%) also had 50+ tackles. The four outside backs for Warriors combined to make 49 tackles with 2 missed tackles, which includes Rocco Berry and Adam Pompey combing for 39 tackles with 1 missed tackle.
Shaun Johnson made 19 tackles @ 95% and has 348 tackles this season which is the second busiest tackling season of his career. In 2016, Johnson made 387 tackles and the number of missed tackles look vastly different for Johnson's seasons with 300+ tackles...
2013: 319 tackles / 69 missed
2016: 348 tackles / 63 missed
2018: 334 tackles / 68 missed
2022: 334 tackles / 46 missed
2023: 348 tackles / 29 missed
Not missing many tackles against Raiders is great because of how robust their running is. This applies for someone like Luke Metcalf (21 tackles / 5 missed) who was defending on Matthew Timoko's edge for example. Tackling these Raiders is difficult, especially when making 75 more tackles than them.
Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad doesn't have to make many tackles, so he takes lots of runs. Here are Nicoll-Klokstad's stats from both games against Raiders...
Round 15: 1 try, 25 runs - 211m @ 8.4m/run, 1 linebreak, 6 tackle busts, 2 offloads, 6 tackles @ 75%
Round 21: 1 try, 22 runs - 194m @ 8.8m/run, 1 linebreak, 5 tackle busts, 13 tackles @ 87%
Dylan Edwards is the only player in the NRL (10+ games) who averages more than Nicoll-Klokstad's 20.9 runs per game. Nicoll-Klokstad is averaging 186m/game and the gap between this season and his 179m/game for Raiders in 2020, continues to grow. Most importantly, Nicoll-Klokstad didn't have a linebreak in the first 11 rounds and now has six linebreaks in the last eight games.
Who runs it? Charnze Nicoll-Kloksdaddy.
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