The New Zealand Warriors women crossed the line as often as the Wests Tigers at CommBank Stadium in Sydney on Sunday and still lost, going down 30-22 in a round seven NRLW match decided almost entirely on the kicking tee.
Five tries each. The difference was what happened after them. Tigers halfback Raecene McGregor, a Kiwi Ferns international, landed five of her six shots at goal. Warriors playmaker Patricia Maliepo managed one from five. Eight points separated the sides at full time, and eight points is close enough to the goalkicking ledger to explain the whole afternoon.
The Warriors were also playing catch-up almost from the first whistle. The Tigers ran out to a 16-0 lead inside the opening quarter with McGregor pulling the strings, Caitlin Turnbull scoring twice and Lily Rogan adding another. For a side that arrived in Sydney fourth on the ladder, it was a wretched start against a team sitting immediately below them.
To their credit the Warriors did not fold. Tysha Ikenasio scored in the corner to get them on the board, and further tries to Stacey Waaka and Emma Paki narrowed the gap to 16-12 at the break. None of the three were converted, which is the detail that came back to haunt them.
The second half was the Warriors’ best football of the day. Ikenasio grabbed her second and Kaiyah Atai crossed with roughly ten minutes remaining to level the scores at 22-22, a comeback from 16-0 down that would have been the story of the round had it held. It did not. A turnover in the wrong part of the field handed the Tigers possession, Manera scored and McGregor converted, and McGregor then closed the match out with a late penalty goal. The New Zealand Herald reported the Warriors slipped to sixth on the ladder as a result, with four wins and three losses from seven matches.
Sixth matters this season. The NRLW runs 12 teams over 11 rounds in 2026 and the top six go through to a three week finals series, which means the Warriors are still inside the cut but are now defending a place rather than chasing one. Four rounds remain and the run home is unforgiving. Next weekend brings the Sydney Roosters, who went through the first six rounds unbeaten and have scored more than three times as many points as they have conceded.
There is a particular irony in the identity of the woman who beat them. McGregor plays her international football in a black jersey. So does Maliepo. So do a good number of the players who filled both teams on Sunday, which is the ordinary state of affairs in a competition where New Zealanders have long been among the most influential figures on the field without a New Zealand club to play for. The Warriors women only returned to the NRLW in 2025 after several seasons away, and part of the argument for their return was exactly this, that Kiwi Ferns should not have to move to Australia to play the best women’s rugby league in the world. On Sunday one of them travelled the other way and won the match.
The Tigers went into the game short-handed. Their squad update confirmed Salma Nour and Harmony Crichton were both out with leg injuries, forcing a reshuffle that handed NRLW debuts to Kayla Henderson and Leah Ollerton. The side also wore its 2026 Indigenous jersey for the fixture. Losing to an under strength opponent who had to blood two players will sting rather more than losing to a full strength one.
For Waaka, the try continues a season that took a while to get going. The 30 year old signed a two year deal with the Warriors after skipping the 2025 campaign to play at her third Rugby World Cup, arriving with two World Cup winners’ medals and Olympic gold from the Black Ferns Sevens. A concussion delayed her club debut, and when she finally took the field against the Canberra Raiders she did so on the wing rather than in the centres where the club had imagined her. She has since settled into the midfield and has been one of the more dangerous attacking players in the competition, which makes the flat opening 20 minutes on Sunday all the more frustrating.
The wider picture is that this is a good Warriors team having an inconsistent season rather than a poor one. They opened with a 32-10 win over the Bulldogs, were beaten 42-16 by Canberra a week later, then thrashed the Cowboys 42-4, edged the Eels 14-12, lost 18-16 to the Titans and beat Newcastle 22-14. That is a side capable of blowing anyone away and capable of losing narrowly to anyone, and the pattern held again in Sydney. Two of their three defeats have come by margins of two points and eight points, which is to say by margins that a reliable kicker would have closed or erased.
Four games left, a finals place to protect and the best team in the competition up first. The Warriors women have got themselves out of worse positions than this, but they will not do it kicking one from five.
You can follow the round by round coverage at RNZ Sport, and the Warriors women’s season so far is set out in the 2026 NRLW season records. Our earlier coverage of the club’s return includes the season opener in Hamilton.
Do the Warriors women make the top six from here, and is the goalkicking a fixable problem or a selection one? Leave a comment below and tell us what you think.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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