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There have been 82 footy-free days since the final whistle blew in the World Cup final at Old Trafford in Manchester last November. It’s been hell, hasn’t it? Enough to make one salivate over the prospect of a meaningless pre-season match between the bottom and second bottom sides in the NRL.
Any footy would have done at this stage, but the Wests Tigers and New Zealand Warriors played out an entertaining trial at Mount Smart Stadium, with the Andrew Webster era in Auckland beginning with a 48-12 win.
The second coming of Tim Sheens era, or the two-season prequel to the Benji Marshall reign, or whatever we’re calling it, looked a lot like Brett Kimmorley’s Wests Tigers. This wasn’t their best team, but it wasn’t their best performance either.
Stefano Utoikamanu, their captain for the day, was by far the best Tiger on ground and grabbed a try early in the second half.
“It was pretty shocking I think, our defence was pretty poor,” he reflected after the game.
Charlie Staines. (Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images)
“We played a pretty young team so we can’t expect much from that. The only thing we can do is move on to next week and just focus on what we need to improve moving to the next game.”
Since we’re counting these days, it was almost a full house for the Warriors: nine tries and eight line breaks plus the win were good enough for 14 Pre-Season Challenge points from a potential 15. Oh, how they will regret their lack of offloads.
It was an encouraging performance, in particular, from new halves Te Maire Martin – shifted from his fullback role at the Broncos – and Luke Metcalf, with their ability to combine in their first outing together particularly impressive.
“We excecuted well on what Webby (Webster) wanted us to do and Luke Metcalf ran the team around really well,” said Martin after the match on Fox League.
“Hopefully we can see Lukey in the open space because he runs faster sideways than some of us run forward. We got to see as his pace on display tonight so that was good to see.”
Game one of the season is in the books: here’s what we learned.
There’s a few major spots available at the Tigers. Fullback is one of them, with new arrival Charlie Staines coming on board at Concord in the hope of securing the No.1 jersey he could only dream of at Penrith.
He got first crack in the trial and ended up on the highlight reel for all the wrong reasons, getting postage-stamped by Marcelo Montoya as he ran in the second Warriors try. Granted, nobody is picking Staines for his goalline D, and granted, his major rival is Daine Laurie, who probably wouldn’t have done any better.
On the stuff Sheens might notice, Staines looked pretty good. He didn’t get much chance to show his broken play skills – though they aren’t in doubt – but he did show a fair bit of leadership within in a side that lacked experience. Staines, though just 22, has plenty of that with a premiership ring from his 39 NRL games.
Staines shifted to the wing after the break and struggled to get involved. We don’t read much into trials, of course, but it wasn’t a perfect audition from the Forbes Ferrari.
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The Tigers seem to be the latest adherents of the ball-playing lock – aka ‘middle service’ – and, on this showing, they might have a rethink about it. Justin Matamua, one of their gun youngsters, was entrusted with the role and struggled pretty badly.
That they would tell a two-game rookie who has predominantly featured on an edge while coming through the grades to go in as a ball-playing lock suggests that it is set to be fairly influential in their system going forwards.
Sheens definitely wasn’t the coach last year and definitely wasn’t feeding input to Kimmorley, but this was seen late last year. Back then, it seemed like the move was to give Jackson Hastings something to do that wasn’t touching the ball 90 times a game in the halves (and that’s not an exaggeration).
Now, we have to assume that the Tigers do these things in a trial game because they want to do them in real games. It begs the question of who might fulfil such a position in real footy, because last year, they ran Joe Ofahengaue at lock before the brief Hastings experiment. Politely, ball-playing is not his strength.
The general feeling was that this was a more expansive version of the Wests Tigers than we have seen in the past, and that at times, it was a little overplayed. In the second half, they played a lot straighter and got better results. There might be something in that.
Trent Barrett learned the hard way last year that, when the roster isn’t the strongest, sometimes simplicity of purpose and ease of understanding are the best way forward.
Coming from the fabled Penrith system, you might have thought Webster would bring a little bit of Blue Mountain magic to his new job in New Zealand. Instead, this was the Cronulla Warriors.
In our Smart Signings piece on the Warriors, I identified that, roster-wise, Webster was highly limited in what he could do by the size of his pack. Small ball, agile footy was the way to go because they simply didn’t have the big men on staff to compete.
If tonight is anything to go by, that’s exactly what they’re going for, and it’s looking pretty good. All caveats about this being the reserve team of last year’s worst side apply, but the manner of this Warriors should give a lot of confidence to fans.
Metcalf and Martin played, whisper it quietly, like little Nicho Hynes and Matt Moylan clones. The Sharkies pairing essentially operated as two five eighths throughout 2022, and it was interesting to see that, while Martin wore the 7 tonight, he referred to Metcalf as being the halfback in his post-match interview. In truth, it was hard to tell which was which and, really, that’s fine.
The pack would make inroads through effort areas and, when good ball came, the halves pairing were more than willing to work both sides of the field in tandem, much like the Sharks duo do.
Cronulla’s style last year was based on back 3 metres, agility from the forwards and dynamic halves who played heads up. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Shaun Johnson comes back into this side, because Metcalf and Martin put on a show tonight.
The back three, as mentioned, are vital to the success of the small ball system. There’ll be bigger tests than this one, of course, but on early viewing, the first choice wingers are up and going for 2023.
Montoya’s hat trick of tries were all well taken, but his ball-carrying from the backfield was the most important part of his game. Ditto Edward Kosi, who came up with a characteristic error, but also returned the footy with aggression.
Given the relative lack of heft in the middle, Webster needs his wingers to deliver solid set starts that can save his pack’s legs for decoys, push supports and defence.
Half of the job for a new coach is stripping back the previous layers of influence and simplifying messaging to the group.
Take the ball, run it hard, play it fast has to be the message to Montoya and Kosi, who must be the favourites to start in Round 1. The other stuff, the tryscoring and defensive organisation, can come.