NRL: Inu a day-dreaming genius

Krisnan Inu. Photo / Getty Images

Borrowing Winston Churchill's description of Russia as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma wouldn't quite do justice to Krisnan Inu.

Extravagantly skilled, fleet of foot and thought and yet, well, totally flaky, the Warriors winger plays as if he was dropped in a vat of the brown acid at Woodstock as a baby. A genius wrapped in a day-dream about sums him up. Inu can do the sort of things most other players can only dream about. He also produces no shortage of plays guaranteed to give his coaches nightmares.

Yesterday against the Rabbitohs he produced an intriguing mix of the brilliant, the bad and the just plain unfathomable.

"It wasn't one of his better games," coach Ivan Cleary said. "He was a bit rocks and diamonds, I guess you could say that."

On balance, it was definitely more of a day spent churning out the greywacke. He scored the winning try, ran for a game-high 236m and, oh, made six errors.

On another day he might have scored two tries and created another in the first half alone. Instead he had the ball knocked out of his hands by John Sutton when diving for the line in the 15th minute; blew a golden chance by slowing down at the end of an 85m run to be tackled by James Roberts a metre short of the line; and watched on the big screen as a try to Simon Mannering was ruled out on the stroke of halftime because he had stepped on the sideline chalk while regathering James Maloney's clever grubber.

Inu wasn't the only one spurning point-scoring invitations. Shaun Berrigan was stripped by Chris Sandow diving for the line in the fourth minute, while Kevin Locke's bid to make up for Inu's intercept blunder ended in a penalty when he was ruled to have dived through the marker as he grounded the ball.

In the end the half's only try came from the simplest route, when Brett Seymour scored between the posts from a dummy half scoot.

With the Rabbitohs completing just 13 of 22 sets and serving up 11 errors, the Warriors would have been bitterly disappointed not to have put the game to bed at the break.

They were made to pay when Souths finally mustered a fluky try to Rhys Wesser midway through the second half to lock up the scores.

A couple of diamond moments from Inu then turned the game back the Warriors' way. A wobbling kickoff that has a habit of finding the sidelines has become very much an Inu party piece this season - one he topped by scoring in the corner a set later after the Warriors had forced the Rabbitohs to drop out from their line.

But Inu's day wasn't done. As the clock ticked down the Warriors twice coughed up possession deep in their own half to invite the Rabbitohs to attempt to tie the scores.

They seemed to have survived the threat when Inu swooped back to deny Nathan Merritt on a first tackle kick play from the scrum-base with 57 seconds remaining. Inu, however, made a bee-line for the sideline and was bundled into touch to hand the ball back with 29 seconds still on the clock.

The Warriors survived, but it was hard to imagine how they could have made heavier weather of notching what should have been a comfortable fifth straight victory.

"Defensively we stood up for 80 minutes," Cleary said. "That was probably the best we have defended for 80 minutes this season. I am pretty happy about that."

The win - a seventh in eight matches - didn't advance the Warriors up the table from the sixth place they were in at the start of the round, but they have closed to within two points of the four teams directly above them.

The two points they will receive from next weekend's bye means they will be primed to push into the top four when they resume their campaign against the Roosters in Sydney in a fortnight.

Having started the season 0-3, it has been a remarkable transformation of fortune. Cleary cited the round-seven win against the Storm in Melbourne as the turning point.

"It is always important to make the most of any sort of momentum you get," he said.

"If you can get yourself on a bit of a run and win a few it makes all the difference in the end, because it is just as easy to lose a few in a row."

As well as they are travelling, the Warriors have at least one major concern - the form, or rather lack of it, of Manu Vatuvei. Since his return from a first-round knee injury the giant winger has been a shadow of the player the club inked to a big-money extension with much fanfare last season.

"Look, he is a fair way off [full fitness]," Cleary admitted. "There are reasons for that.

"He is playing 80 minutes and I think we are going to get into a position over the next few weeks where he can do a lot more training and get himself back to fitness.

"It is exciting to know he has got a lot of improvement there."