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The Roar

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Highlights: Tigers keep slim finals hopes alive

Aaron Woods is off to the Doggies. (Digital Image Grant Trouville © nrlphotos.com).
Expert
28th August, 2016
12

The Wests Tigers have kept their minimal finals chances alive at Mount Smart Stadium, recording a high-scoring, entertaining 12-point victory over the New Zealand Warriors.

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Led by their forwards in a game that went back and forth plenty of times, Mitchell Moses would make the most of a tired Warriors defensive line to spark the Tigers to a come from behind victory.

Aaron Woods played a fantastic game, picking up nearly 200 metres with the Warriors simply unable to make the right decisions consistently enough or win the battle of the middle for long enough periods.

The Warriors were the first onto the scoreboard with Bodene Thompson crashing over. David Nofoaluma would drop a simple grubber, and off the scrum the defence opened up with a short ball to Thompson who scored with ease.

The Tigers would then score back to back tries, the first of which saw Sauaso Sue go over from a wonderful short ball from Woods, who ran to the line and drew defenders, opening a massive gap for Sue.

Woods would then score himself, going over the top of the defence on the last tackle off a short ball out of dummy half from Dene Halatau.

Solomone Kata would then score a try after Thomas Leuluai found some space on the left edge, passed to Ryan Hoffman and then a final offload for Kata to score.

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Simon Mannering got the Warriors back into the lead, scoring off a kick that saw the ball get tapped out the back. Mannering came up with it and no one even got close to him as he scored under the sticks.

The half ended in a little bit of controversy with a massive passing sequence leading to a try for Solomone Kata, only for an obstruction to be ruled.

The controversy continued into the second half, with the Warriors denied another try for a similarly soft obstruction on Aaron Woods. In the end though, any team who has 36 points put on them doesn’t deserve to win a game of rugby league.

The first try of the second half took 16 minutes to come, with both teams visibly tired due to the pace of the game. From a scrum in their own end, the Tigers shifted to Josh Addo-Carr and he broke through the line, running rings around David Fusitu’a to score on an 80 metre run.

Tuimoala Lolohea would then tie the game up for the Warriors. They were struggling to get out of their own end, but a quick shift to the right saw Blake Ayshford break through – he would then link with Shaun Johnson on the inside before passing back out to Lolohea who scored in the corner.

The Tigers would run away with the game in the final ten minutes though, running on three tries.

The first of those was through Sauaso Sue to tie the game up, scoring his second off a short ball from Mitchell Moses, following a wonderful 40/20 kick from Luke Brooks.

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They hit the lead just a couple of minutes later through Mitchell Moses who dummied right, then stepped back on the inside a couple of times before reaching out to score.

The final play of the game saw a kick go up, which was allowed to bounce into the in goal area before Kevin Naiqama came cruising through to plant the ball and keep the Tigers season alive.

The Wests Tigers will now need to defeat the Canberra Raiders next week to qualify for the finals, and that is providing that the Gold Coast Titans lose to the North Queensland Cowboys.

Final Score
New Zealand Warriors 24
Wests Tigers 36

The Roar’s NRL MVP votes
3 – Aaron Woods
2 – Mitchell Moses
1 – David Fusitu’a

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