KEY POINTS:
Sure, the Warriors season may have ended with a whipping and a whimper when they were outplayed by Manly and knocked out of the NRL finals series. But it should be remembered just how tough this competition is.
As it turns out, the Warriors' run of 10 wins from 12, each and every one of them a "must-win" if they were to make the top-eight and push on, had drained their tank. By the time they took the field at the Sydney Football Stadium they were already spent.
Manly had enjoyed a week off, as had Cronulla, but the Sea Eagles showed none of the nervousness and mistiming that beset the Sharks as they were knocked out of the contest by the Melbourne Storm the night before.
It was a clinical performance by the Eagles, who are driven by memory of their similarly embarrassing defeat at the hands of the Storm in the 2007 grandfinal.
So the same two teams go back to the title fight and after comparing the Warriors' two recent wins over Melbourne to the hiding they took on Saturday in Sydney, you have to favour the Sea Eagles as title favourites. Manly should go on and lift their first title since 1997, especially if the Storm lose their prop Brett White to suspension for raising his elbow as he carried the ball at opposite Ben Cross on Friday.
If Manly do succeed, it will be the third time the Warriors have been knocked out of the premiership race by the eventual winners, after defeat to the Roosters in the 2002 grandfinal and to Penrith in 2003.
In the past seven years six different teams have won - those two and the Broncos, Bulldogs, Tigers and Storm. Last repeat win was in the 1990s.
To lift the trophy there is the run of victories required through 26 rounds, then making the end of season relatively injury-free and with all your big-name players not only fit but firing. You need to go into the playoffs with momentum and to have previous experience of the big occasion and thus knowledge of how to win it. None of those six teams won from outside the top-four.
On Saturday night, the Warriors had chances and failed to covert them into points. Had Manu Vatuvei scored in the corner in the sixth minute it may have put a whole new complexion on the game. But the ball was ripped free. At 16 minutes Manly's star fullback Brett Stewart dropped Nathan Fien's bomb in front of his posts but a knock-on after the scrum blew that chance. At 29 minutes they forced a goal-line drop-out but knocked on again in front of the posts.
The play was end-to-end, the difference being that when Manly got repeat sets of six they scored, firstly through Stewart running an angle at speed off halfback Matt Orford, then through veteran Steve Menzies after a brilliant piece of teamwork in handling and, with their spirits notably lifting as they used the ball more, to Steve Matai for 12-0 at the break.
The Warriors were still in it then. After Jamie Lyon produced a chip, re-gather and off-load as he fell in a tackle to put Orford under the bar at 47 minutes, they weren't any more.
They needed to get Wade McKinnon into the game but couldn't due to Manly's strategy to keep the ball from him. They frequently needed support play and there was none, whereas there had been in spades up to the magic win over the Roosters the weekend before. It was fatigue.
The Lyon/Orford try was a piece of footballing brilliance. And so followed three more, the Warriors with no fuel in their tank to stop the rout. What little fuel they took to Sydney burned by a huge differential in the tackle count in the first half.
By the end they had completed 22 of 34 sets of six, the Eagles 34/41.
Steve Price was best metre-gainer on the field bar Brett Stewart, 14m. Vatuvei who was targeted by chips to his left corner all night as Manly denied Wade McKinnon any decent chance at kick-return, was next-best at 127m and Jerome Ropati made 117m. Price topped the Warriors' hit-up count, 14, Ruben Wiki second at nine. Afterwards, the senior Warriors were joined in their dressing room by the Juniors, who had turned victory to 26-24 defeat at the hands of the Brisbane Broncos with 26 seconds left on the clock in their elimination final.
They had run down the Broncos' early 12-0 lead, got out to 20-12, then led 26-18 as the clock wound down. Broncos forward Michael Spence's path to the try-line was blocked by three Warriors. He had nowhere to go and no runners looking for a pass. He danced and danced and then decided to chip and run, the ball returning a fortuitous bounce and Spence regathering and handing off to Tom Butterfield to make a name for himself, the conversion from in front the difference.
The Junior Warriors might have learned plenty from the win and a trip to next week's grandfinal curtainraiser. But maybe they'll learn more from the loss - they now know you play for 80 minutes, not 79 and 34 seconds.
All-up, with significant boost to the depth, particularly in the backs with the arrival of Joel Moon and Denan Kemp from the Broncos, plus on-going input from under-20s like Ben Matulino, the Warriors' 2009 season promises better than 2008 delivered, particularly at the business end.
Warriors on the run:
The Warriors' results since the third State of Origin on July 2:
Round 17 - Bye.
Round 18 - WIN 24-14 v Cowboys (home).
Round 19 - WIN 40-22 v Bulldogs (away).
Round 20 - WIN 8-6 v Storm (home).
Round 21 - LOSS 16-18 v Souths (home).
Round 22 - WIN 16-12 v Broncos (home).
Round 23 - WIN 16-4 v Sharks (home).
Round 24 - LOSS 6-34 v Dragons (away).
Round 25 - WIN 42-20 v Panthers (home).
Round 26 - WIN 28-6 v Eels (away).
Finals week one - WIN 18-15 v Storm (away).
Finals week two - WIN 30-13 v Roosters (home).
Finals week three - LOSS 6-32 v Manly (away).
