The Anzac Day curse remains for the Warriors, after going down 27-24 to bottom of the table Gold Coast Titans at Go Media Mt Smart Stadium on Thursday. They haven’t won a fixture on Anzac Day for over a decade, despite having hosting rights this year.<\/p>\n
Despite another strong opening 20 minutes from the Warriors, which saw two quick tries from Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad in his 100th NRL game and Addin Fonua-Blake, they let the game slip from their grasp.<\/p>\n
The Titans came flying back, racking up three consecutive tries and iced it off with a Tanah Boyd field goal to go into sheds with a 19-12 lead at halftime<\/p>\n
Things started looking grim for the home side at the start of the second half after the Titans capitalised through Alofiana Khan-Pereira scoring straight away. Fullback AJ Brimson then scored his second, making it five unanswered tries to the Titans.<\/p>\n
It seemed that momentum had swung back the way of the Warriors when Roger Tuivasa-Sheck desperately climbed up to clutch a Shaun Johnson bomb, but it was quickly overturned following a Wayde Egan error picked up in the play of the ball.<\/p>\n
The Warriors began their fight back racking up quick consecutive tries through Fonua-Blake and Rocco Berry, but the Titans held on desperately defending their line having an answer for everything the Warriors through at them.<\/p>\n
In the end it wasn’t enough as yet another display of poor discipline and errors at crucial times conspired to hand them a disappointing defeat.<\/p>\n
“I feel gutted for the boys because they’re not playing the way they want to play,” Warriors coach Andrew Webster said.<\/p>\n
“It’s individual moments that are killing us. 12-nil up and then missed tackles by individuals. We’re just losing the ruck in defence.<\/p>\n
“We made it really hard for ourselves but I’m not taking anything away from the Titans.”<\/p>\n
“We had lots of opportunities to score but we didn’t execute enough and we shouldn’t have to chase like that.”<\/p>\n
Webster said he’s ready for the challenge to turn their fortunes around.<\/p>\n
“We’ve lost two in a row, it’s not 10 in a row,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got to get back to being us and we’re not at the moment.”<\/p>\n
The game was played in front of another impressive 24,000 strong crowd, however the Warriors had better find a way to start winning if they want that figure to continue. They face the struggling Knights next Sunday in Newcastle.<\/p>\n
The experienced Titans coach said the momentum was shifting at the end of the game but his players showed heart to hold on.<\/p>\n
“We probably deserved to get the points but we made a really hard fist of it by giving them a 12 point start,” Titans coach Des Hasler said.<\/p>\n
“But we knew if we hung in there, if we stuck to what we planned it would turn a little bit.<\/p>\n
“Towards the end there we showed a ton of guts of which you’d expect.<\/p>\n
“Something special happens on days like these and on the Titans behalf anyway we showed fighting spirit towards the end.”<\/p>\n
Titans 27<\/b>\u00a0(AJ Brimson 2, Tanah Boyd, David Fifita, Alofiana Khan-Pereira tries; Boyd 3 goals, field goal)<\/p>\n
Warriors 24<\/b>\u00a0(Addin Fonua-Blake 2, Charnze Niccol-Klokstad, Rocco Berry tries; Shaun Johnson 4 goals)<\/p>\n
HT: 19-12 Titans<\/p>\n
rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Anzac Day curse remains for the Warriors, after going down 27-24 to bottom of the table Gold Coast Titans at Go Media Mt Smart Stadium on Thursday. They haven’t won a fixture on Anzac Day for over a decade, despite having hosting rights this year. Despite another strong opening 20 minutes from the Warriors, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":9639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9640,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9638\/revisions\/9640"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}