If it wasn’t for the dumb individual errors, then who knows where this Warriors team would be right now?
The Warriors, who play the Sea Eagles on Saturday night, were blighted by terrible errors last weekend in the 24-16 loss to the Knights and it seems there’s some sort of internal rotation going on over whose turn it is to play poorly each week.
The issue with the Warriors is that they’re not a bad team, like the Tigers of Bulldogs, but they’re continually shooting themselves in the foot.
It’s frustrating for the coaches, they can hardly say ‘please don’t make mistakes this week guys’, because no one does them on purpose, but they are damaging the club’s top eight chances.
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“They’re schoolboy errors and they really hurt us,” Warriors assistant coach Stacey Jones said.
“For a period (against the Knights) we kicked a couple of balls out on the full, kicked it dead, didn’t catch a kick off and after a few of those errors the opposition scored points.
NRL Photos / www.photosport.nz
Reece Walsh slipped over attempting a conversion against the Knights.
“The last half of the season we’re making fundamental errors that are leading to tries, so the individual has to make sure they’re focussed on the moment, rather than think too far ahead and that’s certainly what’s hurting us.
“Basic fundamentals are playing a big part in where we’re at.”
The Sea Eagles are hardly high-flyers in the NRL this season. They’ve won one of their last six games, with that solitary victory coming against Wests Tigers. So it will be a dance of the desperate at 4 Pines Stadium.
“I’m not saying it’s a must win, but the last few weeks we’ve been thinking something similar to that,” Jones said.
“You can’t look back, only forward and we’re going there to try to get our season back on track.
“It has been frustrating and it would be nice to put together a complete game of footy, rather than bits and pieces and to do that we need every man on the field doing his job.
“The last few weeks we’ve probably had 10 or 12 guys do their job and five or seven guys not.
“It’s been like that the whole year and we need consistent numbers to be doing their job every week. If we can get that part of our game right, we’ll give ourselves every chance.”
One problem the Warriors have had over the past couple of weeks is the poor goal kicking from Reece Walsh.
He was superb at the start of the season, but with his conversions against the Dragons he was one from four and against the Knights went one from three.
Jones says there’s a technical issue with Walsh that he’s been working through with the club’s goal kicking coach Daryl Halligan.
“There’s certainly something he’s not doing right, but I’m not the expert with this,” Jones said.
“It’s like a golfer when he’s got a hook or a slice in his swing, you’ve got something in your game you can’t quite shrug.
“He’s working hard with Daryl. At the start of the year he was in the high 90s with his kicking percentage and goal kicking is something we need to be better at, but one thing I do know is that Reece is working hard on it.”
With club’s missing their State of Origin players this weekend, the Sea Eagles have lost their halfback and captain, Daly Cherry Evans.
However, Jake Trbojevic will play, as he surprisingly missed out on selection, something that has disappointed the Warriors as much as Trbojevic himself.
“Without a doubt, he’s a key player for them,” Jones said.
“The beauty of it is that you know what you’re going to get from Jake. You’re going to get a solid performance and he becomes a key player to them now with their attack.
“If Jake wasn’t playing, you don’t know where their attack is going to come from. When his brother Tom (out injured) and Daly Cherry-Evans were there, you had three prongs of attack, now they’ve got Kieran Foran there still, but they’ve probably just got one.
“Jake is their main ball player in the middle and you know what you’re going to get. At least we know that, but certainly it would have been nice if he was playing Origin next week.”
