The Warriors have gone back to the top of the NRL ladder after a 46-32 win over the Newcastle Knights at Mount Smart Stadium on Sunday afternoon, and with one round of the regular season still to play the gap between them and Penrith is a single point.
Both clubs finished the weekend on 40 competition points. The Warriors have a scoring differential of plus 309 and the Panthers have plus 308, which is enough to put the Auckland side first on a countback, Australian Associated Press reported. To hold the position, the Warriors need to beat Manly at Mount Smart on Saturday and hope Penrith either lose or win by a smaller margin than they do.
None of that looked likely for the first quarter of an hour. Newcastle scored three tries before the Warriors had touched the scoreboard, through Fletcher Hunt, Francis Manuleleua and Jermaine McEwen, and the home side trailed 16-0 in front of their own crowd.
The game turned on a tackle in the 12th minute. Knights prop Jacob Saifiti came out of the defensive line and made contact with the head of Warriors winger Luke Laulilii, who was playing his first game for the club. Referee Adam Gee sent Saifiti from the field, and Newcastle played the remaining 67 minutes with 12 men. Laulilii failed his head injury assessment and did not return.
Even a man down, the Knights kept scoring. They put on another try to Hunt before halftime and two more to winger Greg Marzhew in the second half, finishing with 32 points, which is not the sort of figure a coach chasing a points differential wants to see. Andrew Webster said afterwards he was not happy with what his side leaked.
The larger story of the afternoon was the young man wearing number 23. With halfback Te Maire Martin and five-eighth Chanel Harris-Tavita both ruled out late with hamstring problems, the Warriors handed a first-grade debut to 21-year-old Jett Cleary, the Auckland-born youngest son of former Warriors player and coach Ivan Cleary and the younger brother of Penrith halfback Nathan Cleary. His family scrambled for a flight from Sydney to watch him play.
Cleary was credited with three try assists and had a hand in several others. He fed second-rower Jacob Laban for the first Warriors try, sent lock Erin Clark over to bring the scores level, and put up the kick that Adam Pompey regathered and passed on to Demitric Vaimauga for a 22-20 halftime lead. In the closing minutes he threw the offload that let Laban score the try that swung the countback, as RNZ reported.
“I just thought he looked like he belonged,” Warriors captain Mitch Barnett said. “For a young half, they just want to tackle well and kick well. I thought he defended really well… Jett had his gloves up. He’ll only get better each time he takes the field now.”
Newcastle went looking for him, as teams do with a debutant. One clean-out after a kick sparked a scuffle between the two packs, and there was a second flare-up later in the game after another marginal tackle.
“I think whenever there are young halves and someone on debut, you naturally want to test them out,” Knights captain Kalyn Ponga said. “I think he played well, I think he played his role. He’ll be proud and his family will be proud no doubt. When you look back in years to come and your debut was win, so he’ll be happy.”
Webster was more blunt about it. “We could hear them yelling his name over the comms, they tried to run at him and he stood up to it, and the boys stuck up for him at the right times,” he told RNZ. “One of Jett’s biggest strengths is how tough he is and how much he competes, so you’re not going to get under his skin or worry him like that.”
The final margin mattered as much as the win. The Warriors needed to win by 14 points to pass Penrith, and fullback Taine Tuaupiki delivered it with the boot. He missed his first conversion attempt of the night and then landed the next seven, several of them from close to the sideline, including the last one that made the difference exactly 14.
Cleary and fellow rookie Luke Hanson formed the club’s ninth spine combination of the season. Tanah Boyd is out with a knee injury and Luke Metcalf with a hamstring, and the coaching staff decided not to risk Martin and Harris-Tavita on Sunday even though both were named.
“We had every intention of Chanel and Te Maire playing (on Sunday),” Webster said. “No one re-injured anything. Chanel pulled up last week with a tight hamstring. We thought he’d be OK. It was just a process where we knew that we were going to send them out there and risk a long-term hamstring injury for both of them… We had faith in our young guys.”
Webster also used the week to defend centre Adam Pompey, who had been attacked online after a poor game against South Sydney and was dropped to the bench against Newcastle. Pompey came on, scored a try and set up another. “I didn’t know about that. No one told me that. That’s probably a weakness of mine,” Webster said of the social media pile-on. “We left him stranded several times last week against Cody Walker. That’s their supercar. They’re idiots, like absolute idiots.”
Cleary will not be around to build on the debut. He has been granted an early release to join Penrith next season, where his father is stepping down as coach and his brother is contracted through 2027.
The Warriors host Manly at Mount Smart at 5pm on Saturday. Webster now has the sort of problem coaches would rather have, which is whether to pick his best side and chase the minor premiership or rest players who have carried the load all year with a home final already close to locked in. Where that final is played is a separate argument the club is still having with the NRL, which we covered last week.
If they do finish first, it will be the club’s second minor premiership in 32 seasons and the first in 24 years. The only other one came in 2002, when Stacey Jones and Ivan Cleary were in the side and the Warriors pipped the Knights on points differential to take the trophy, then lost the grand final to the Sydney Roosters. Beating Newcastle and squeaking ahead on differential in the same week is the sort of rhyme the game throws up now and then.
What do you make of the Warriors’ run and their chances of a first premiership? Do you think Webster should risk his best team against Manly or wrap them in cotton wool for the playoffs? Leave a comment below and tell us what you reckon.
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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