Warriors 22-26 Broncos

By Aiden McLaughlin

On Saturday night, McLean Park in Napier became the tenth ground in New Zealand to host a Warriors home match, in front of a sold-out crowd of 16,195. When the fixture was announced in November last year and the tickets went on sale the following month, little did anyone know what fate would hold in store for Hawke’s Bay in the coming months, nor the respective form of the home side and the visiting Broncos.

At kick-off, the Broncos sat fourth on the ladder with 16 points, level with five other teams. The Warriors lay seventh, just two points behind them. Much was made of the absence of five Broncos players, on Origin duty, but it was forgotten by the end as the visitors capitalised on a host of missed Warriors opportunities despite a late comeback from the home side.

At 26-10 down with seven minutes to go, some of the crowd decided to beat the rush, unaware that they were about to miss another of those crazy Warriors spells. Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad and Marcelo Montoya added tries, both converted by Shaun Johnson, and they were within touching distance. Then, the passionate crowd that had remained, exploded as Montoya went over on the left hand side again in the 79th minute, before the bunker ruled that Adam Pompey had held the jersey of Deine Mariner in the build-up.

It shouldn’t have come to that and Warriors head coach Andrew Webster had ‘no complaints’ about that decision.

“We had a million of those moments tonight that we didn’t own and that just summed us up I thought,” said Webster.

“We won almost every single stat physically, but the ones where you’ve got to make your tackles, line-breaks and tries, an error in the first half for a 100 metre try, a drop off a kick off and we didn’t defend it; our DNA all year has been we defend those and we didn’t. So the last play isn’t the biggest moment, it’s just one of many, but it came down to that.”

The 100 metre try Webster referred to, was in fact more like 80 metres, and it broke the deadlock after 23 minutes, when the Broncos scored off a Warriors error as Montoya lost control of a pass out on the left and Auckland born Deine Mariner sprinted away to score, with Broncos captain Adam Reynolds adding the first of his three conversions, complimented by a penalty kick in the second half.

With the Broncos looking the better team after their first try, Dallin Watene-Zelezniak got the Warriors off the mark in the 36th minute with his first of two tries, touching down acrobatically in the right hand corner. With Johnson adding the two, it looked like both sides would run into the sheds with the scoreboard level, but Brisbane weren’t done, and it was the drop from the kick-off that Webster referred to, by Tom Ale, that gave the Broncos possession close to the tryline. A short pass from Billy Waters to Jordan Riki looked forward for all money, but with the bunker unable to have a look, the Broncos led 12-6 after the first forty.

It was a strangely subdued start to the second half despite Warriors captain Tohu Harris saying that the late first half try didn’t affect their mindset.

“We knew that we created a lot of opportunities and we were pretty calm and confident at half-time,” he said.

“We just didn’t ice those certain moments and weren’t as patent as we could have been.”

The loss of Freddy Lussick and Nicoll-Klokstad to HIA’s in the second half didn’t help matters, although the latter returned to score a late try. But the Broncos looked good for their 16 point lead as Ezra Mam went over after 53 minutes and Mariner later scored his second try.

Ultimately though, the comeback was too little, too late.

“I thought the effort was still there, but what we’re working on, is we don’t want to be a team of just effort, that only gets you so far in the contest, it doesn’t guarantee you wins; you have to combine it with detail, and in such a hard and close competition, you have to get it right,” said Webster.

The contest was marred late on by a series of pitch invasions that disrupted both sides and will no doubt have left organisers angry and frustrated after an otherwise excellent occasion.

“It gets really annoying to be honest, especially when we’re trying to build ourselves back into the game. It just burns when we know the other team’s getting a rest when we want to keep going at them and keep building pressure,” said Harris.

“I thought it was a fabulous game, except the interruptions weren’t great,” said Broncos head coach Kevin Walters.

“We’re grateful for the win, it could have gone either way.”

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