KEY POINTS:
The Warriors handled Auckland-style winter weather better than the Sharks to record a desperately needed win in Cronulla.
With a strong southerly and near horizontal downpours, a rash of errors might have been returned. Instead both sides managed to hold the ball and complete sets - but both failed to take full advantage of the gale when they had it by hoisting long kicks deep into opposition territory.
But the Warriors did better on attack and maintained the defensive effort of recent weeks, missing far fewer tackles than did the Sharks.
Cronulla coach Ricky Stuart admitted he had been puzzled about the Sharks' tendency to drop their attack, "clocking off", in one of every four games and said he would examine his own approach.
"They handled the conditions a lot better than us but we executed poorly on attack," Stuart said. "It's something that's been bothering me. We can't do any more work on it. We're doing enough time on it but we're not transferring it to the footy field.
"I've got to look at myself in the way I'm coaching our attack at training. I've got to change some ideas because, obviously, what we're doing at training's not working. I've got to look at me.
"This is the third game this year we haven't been involved in - the other two were Souths and Newcastle. We've fallen into a habit where we've been strong for a period of a month and we have one week off."
They were helped into that position by a strong performance from the Warriors forward pack, which held ascendency throughout the match.
The NRL recorded skipper Steve Price as gaining an incredible 306 metres, two nights after a stellar return in State of Origin. He had better reinforcement this week from Sam Rapira, Evarn Tuimavave and Logan Swann.
Warriors coach Ivan Cleary dropped Lance Hohaia to reserve grade, elevated Todd Byrne and Louis Anderson and shifted Simon Mannering back to centre.
Mannering had a good game as did fullback Wade McKinnon. The halves pairing of Grant Rovelli and Michael Witt worked better and it was Witt who set up their first points after 11 minutes.
George Gatis ran from dummy-half near the Sharks' posts and, after an interchange with Tuimavave, Witt was around his marker and into score. The teams toughed it out through some atrocious conditions, the only other first-half points from a Luke Covell penalty.
And the second half was not much different. The Sharks rarely looked like scoring. The Warriors bombed two opportunities; Witt throwing a high pass to Patrick Ah Van when he should have run himself to score. Ah Van dropped the ball with the line open. And, five minutes later, Rovelli dived over but the Warriors were penalised for obstructing the marker defence.
At 76 minutes, Nathan Fien put through a grubber for wing Manu Vatuvei to get last points and Witt converted from near the sideline and into the gale.
Cleary was pleased for Vatuvei as he had shown character through adversity. "I thought it would have been nice for him to get a bit more ball because, every time he got it, he looked like he was going to do something."
South Sydney have said they cannot match offers other clubs, including the Warriors, have made for their hooker, Stuart Webb. Webb, 26, has played 64 NRL games but just four this season, appearing mostly in reserve grade. He was at the Roosters during the same period as Warriors coach Cleary.
Saturday night's win has prompted Aussie bookmakers to lengthen the odds they'll pay if he is sacked before the end of the season - an event that was always unlikely. Cleary is paying $7, while the Dragons' Nathan Brown remains favourite to get the axe at $3, the Bulldogs' Steve Folkes at $4.50, Newcastle's new coach Brian Smith at $6.50.
In the compressed NRL table - with multiple upsets occurring every weekend - the Warriors can get back in touch with the play-offs if they back up against Penrith at Mt Smart next Friday night.
* The Auckland Lions faced the wind in the first half of the reserve grade curtainraiser at Cronulla on Saturday and were down 26-4, four tries to one to Hohaia, at halftime. Hohaia got a double as they recovered to 16-34.
