Rugby League: Win to savour but testing times to come

By PETER JESSUP

At Penrith Stadium this Sunday, the Warriors will sit the pre-exam test that will separate the playoff pretenders from the contenders.

The Warriors have a fingernail on the club's first playoff spot since they were founded in 1995. They have to smash the Panthers to prove they can win away, win consecutive games, win when they have to and, most of all, win the games they should.

The Warriors' comprehensive and controlled 34-8 demolition of playoff certainties the Bulldogs at Ericsson reinforced the fact they can beat any side in the competition.

The victory halted a five-game roll for the Doggies.

It backs up the entertainer the Warriors put on against the fourth-placed Newcastle Knights the week before and the victory over the Eels a month ago.

The shed song that rang from the Warriors' dressing room on Saturday night was their loudest yet. The decibels shook the concrete stand as the disconsolate Dogs sat heads-down.

The home team's defence was impenetrable, with none of the holes Newcastle found.

And the forwards were awesome on attack and defence, laying a beautiful platform from which halfback Stacey Jones conducted things.

Jones landed a 40/20 ground-gainer in the first plays, and he scored the first try when Logan Swann pressured Bulldog stand-in wing Shane Marteene under a Jones bomb, returning the ball for the half to dive over.

Jones repeatedly put the Dogs in their in-goal. He returned Swann's favour and the secondrower scored from another precision cross-field kick, with a third producing points for Henry Fa'afili. That conversion was Jones' only miss of six.

The Warriors were up 12-4 at the break after stunning defence unsettled the Dogs.

The visitors opened the second-half attack, but the Warriors' defence continued to force errors and after six minutes big Jerry SeuSeu belied his size with a line-break and 30m gain, off-loading one-handed as he went to the dirt five metres out.

Who should be in back-up but the bigger Mark Tookey, scooping a low-and-behind ball to dive over near the posts.

Jones had set that one up, too, with the mid-field gain. But how often does a prop pass for a second prop to score, especially in open play?

It was Tookey's ninth try since his debut in 1996, and his second this month. Coach Daniel Anderson praised Tookey's silky ball skills and rated that try the turning point in the game.

It was certainly a measure of how right everything went for them. But really, you make your own luck and it was the six minutes before the break and the six leading up to the Tookey try that broke the Bulldogs.

They had held territorial and possession advantages at both stages, attacked with everything, and failed to score.

Braith Anasta and Darrell Trindall were inventive, but they could not get over because they were allowed no opportunities and because the pressure defence forced errors and turnovers.

It was physical, hurting defence that threw the Dogs on their back, slowed their play-the-ball, tackles that drained them of the gas and will to attack.

Frustration produced some scrappy interchanges, but the Warriors kept playing while the visitors got dirty. Referee Paul Simpkins allowed them to slow the Warriors' attack with hold-downs in the tackle when the home side got into the visitors' 20 metres, but it didn't work.

Out wide, the Warriors backs had a field day, including some basketball off-loads - and they stuck.

Simpkins did see the Dogs' forward passes, and caught them offside when they intercepted. He called Nigel Vagana back after playing advantage from a turnover to the Warriors when they returned the ball to their old team-mate.

All those sorts of things have often gone against the Warriors. It was their night.

Dogs' coach Steve Folkes had no excuses. He said they had concentrated heavily on beating the Broncos the previous weekend, and perhaps that had cost.

They had lost captain Darren Britt 30 minutes into the first half when he turned his ankle, "but we didn't go down through lack of effort - it was the opposition playing well."

The win places the Warriors one point out of the eight, but coach Anderson was not thinking ahead to the Panthers this Sunday. "Let me savour tonight before I think about Penrith." But an early topic in the dressing room was repeating that effort away from home, and playing with passion.

"If you're going to lose, then you should force teams to play good football to beat you, and finish with your head held up."

Heads are up now, and deservedly so. Saturday night's effort, the memory of a 52-8 victory over Penrith at Ericsson in round eight in April, and the knowledge that the last-placed Panthers have won only five times this year have to provide the petrol for a Panther-burning.

* The Melbourne Storm defeated the Brisbane Broncos 32-28 in a roller-coaster match at Colonial Stadium yesterday. Three exhilarating Brisbane tries early in the second half threatened to make the game safe, but the Storm bounced back with 18 unanswered points.

In other matches yesterday, the Parramatta Eels romped clear at the top of the table with a 62-0 thumping of the North Queensland Cowboys and the Newcastle Knights moved into second with an equally emphatic home win, 54-26, over the Canberra Raiders.

The crowd at Parramatta Stadium did not have to wait long for Eels halfback Jason Taylor to become the leading points-scorer in first-grade history. His conversion after 10 minutes took him to 2036, two clear of New Zealander Daryl Halligan, who broke the record last year.