KEY POINTS:
The Warriors must keep the ball away from Parramatta's explosive backline as much as possible if they are to win tonight's finals qualifier at Mt Smart Stadium.
The ground will be hard but the grass and ball slippery in the cold, clear, dewy conditions.
Best bet for the Warriors may be to employ grubbers that offer the chance of a fatal bounce or an error produced by greasy hands rather than to punt to the Eels because their outside backs are all good in the air.
The Eels' weakness is in the halves, with Tim Smith and Brett Finch looking decidedly uncomfortable when their pack is not earning them room to move. They are not ones to readily take on the line in traffic, preferring to work long passes for their outsides and sometimes forced into wrong options or error.
It is those outside-backs the Warriors have to contain - Timana Tahu is arguably the form centre of the NRL and the home team simply does not have the pace to match Eric Grothe, Krisnan Inu and Jarryd Hayne.
But as the adage goes, tonight's game will be won in the forwards.
To slow the supply of ball to the Parramatta backs the Warriors must stop props Nathan Cayless and Fuifui Moimoi and lock Feleti Mateo from denting the line and getting quick play-the-balls. Mateo has been brought from the bench to start, presumably to supply this early on.
Early dominance may count. The Warriors cannot afford to let in 14 points before they reply, as they did at Penrith last weekend.
They need to be playing at the right end of the field and that means a good kicking game from Michael Witt in particular and good chasing from the rest.
There are some things the Warriors can bank on: Steve Price's ground-gain, Michael Witt's 94 per cent kicking rate, Micheal Luck's 40-odd tackles. But they have lost significant strike in their backs with Jerome Ropati and Manu Vatuvei out injured and Ropati may also be missed for his solid defence on the right side of the field. Both the Warriors wings are sure to be the target of high kicks, the tactic that worked so well when the Eels won 30-6 at Parramatta in roundplay.
The Warriors' strength is in their off-loads and support play, their ability to take sides by surprise by doing the unexpected and their enthusiasm to carry breaks on. And this is no longer the win-or-lose-it style it was, the silly passes and the dropped balls and errors all but eliminated.
They can score from long-range like no other team in the competition, something other NRL teams have found impossible to defend against. The Eels will try to limit the forward hand-offs in traffic by putting multiple tacklers on the ball-carrier and by umbrella defence up on the support players either side who might take a pass.
Don't expect either side to play conservatively tonight. Coaches Ivan Cleary and Michael Hagan are both wary of taking their teams away from the game-plan that got them this far and both said they would not be telling their young stars to tone down the way they play. The Eels' game-plan would be the same as it was in their 68-22 win over Brisbane last Sunday, Hagan said yesterday - "get through our sets and run hard".
He was big on routine, he admitted. There was some concern that the Broncos game did not provide the physicality of finals and they would have to start with a lot of energy, Hagan said.
The Eels flew over on Wednesday and ran at Mt Smart yesterday, dismissing talk that the short turn-around would hurt them. Wednesday is normally their day off so it was a standard week for them, said spokesman Damian Kelly.
Neither side had injury concerns yesterday.
Only Melbourne and Manly have scored more than the Warriors' 593 points this season and their defence is fifth-best, 434 points conceded at an average of 18.
They need to play with that confidence.
Provided the top two teams, the Storm and Eagles win, neither the Warriors nor Eels will be eliminated tonight. A Warriors win means it's back to Mt Smart next Saturday to play the loser of the Cowboys/Bulldogs final. Lose and they go to either Townsville or Sydney.
