The Warriors women fly to Sydney this week for a match they will be expected to win, and for the first time this NRLW season their coach has something close to a full squad to pick from.
The Warriors face the Parramatta Eels at Eric Tweedale Stadium on Sunday, kicking off at midday New Zealand time. Parramatta have lost all three of their matches and sit second to last on a twelve team ladder. The Warriors sit sixth with two wins and one loss, and arrive off the back of the most convincing performance any New Zealand side has produced in the competition this year.
That performance came on Saturday at Go Media Stadium, where the Warriors ran over the top of the North Queensland Cowboys 42-4 in front of 12,611 people. RNZ reported the Warriors led 14-0 at the break before pulling away in the second half, with wing Lavinia Tauhalaliku scoring four tries and former sevens international Stacey Waaka grabbing two. Ivana Lauitiiti, Jasmin Huriwai and Ocean Tierney scored the others. Francesca Goldthorp got the only try the Cowboys managed all afternoon.
It was the answer the club needed after round two, when the Canberra Raiders put 42 points on the Warriors in the capital and ran in eight tries to three. Captain Apii Nicholls said after that loss that the standard had slipped, and the response a week later suggested the message landed.
Coach Ron Griffiths singled out his debutants after the Cowboys win. Speaking to the NZ Herald, Griffiths said of Lauitiiti, “When you watch Ivana at training and she’s just powerful and that’s how she runs at training.” Of Tyra, who filled in out wide, he said, “Tyra’s not a winger and she just went out there and acquitted herself extremely well. Her defensive movement and being able to lock on different times was really good.”
Griffiths is not a coach short of credentials in this competition. He won back to back NRLW titles with the Newcastle Knights before crossing the Tasman, and the Warriors backed him with a recruitment drive that brought in a group of high profile names for 2026. The problem so far has been getting them all on the field at the same time.
That is starting to change. RNZ reported on Tuesday that wing Payton Takimoana is back after damaging a shoulder against the Canterbury Bulldogs, and that back rower Kaiyah Atai has been named to start after breaking a finger in the pre-season. Two of the club’s marquee signings, five eighth Gayle Broughton and centre Mele Hufanga, are named in the extended reserves.
Broughton and Hufanga are the two the Auckland crowd has been waiting to see. Hufanga has not played a minute of the season after straining a hamstring in the pre-season. Broughton picked up a quad injury at training and has been given a recovery window measured in weeks rather than days, so her name in the reserves should be read as a marker of progress rather than a guarantee she takes the field on Sunday.
There is one loss to absorb. Tauhalaliku, fresh off her four try haul and the competition’s leading try scorer, is unavailable to travel to Sydney. Losing your most dangerous finisher in the week you finally get bodies back is the kind of luck that has followed this squad all season, though against a winless Parramatta side the Warriors have more room to absorb it than they would against most opponents.
The wider point for the club is that the NRLW season is short and unforgiving. Twelve teams play eleven rounds before the grand final on 4 October, which means there is no long middle stretch in which to find form. Every round is roughly a tenth of the season. The Warriors have already used a third of their campaign, and the two wins they have banked came against sides currently sitting ninth and twelfth. The Canberra loss remains the only measure of how they go against a team in the top half, and it was not flattering.
Parramatta, for their part, are not a side to be written off entirely. They have been competitive in patches without converting it into points, and a home crowd at Eric Tweedale Stadium against a travelling New Zealand team is exactly the sort of fixture that produces an upset. The Warriors have not won consistently on the road in this competition, and a midday kickoff in Sydney at the back end of a travel week is a different assignment from a Saturday evening in front of 12,000 at home.
Still, the arithmetic favours the Warriors. Three of the four sides directly around them on the ladder are also on two wins, so points separation matters, and a win in Sydney would push them up the table before they meet stronger opposition later in the season. With Atai starting, Takimoana back and Broughton and Hufanga on the way, Griffiths is closer than he has been all year to fielding the team the club actually signed.
What do you make of the Warriors women’s season so far, and can they hold a top six spot once the tougher fixtures arrive? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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