NRL: Powerful defence works for Warriors

Bodene Thompson celebrates his try with Tuimoala Lolohea and Konrad Hurrell. Photo / Getty Images

McFadden happy his side able to contain Raiders.

As pleasing as it was to pile on the points in their 30-8 victory over Canberra, the Warriors will take more satisfaction out of their miserly defence than their potent attacking play.

The home side backed up pre-game talk about producing another composed and patient showing against the Raiders, and built upon last week's clinical second-half effort against the Titans.

While the Shaun Johnson-led right-edge attack was dominant in scoring four of their five tries, Warriors coach Andrew McFadden said his side's tackling and game management had paved the way for the win.

"We kept the best attacking team in the competition to eight points so I thought we controlled the game for most," said McFadden. "Both last week and this week have been similar themes. We built pressure through our kick game and probably our defensive effort and then the points came on the back of that.

"So we certainly had to earn it. It was still only 14-8 at halftime so there was plenty of work to do."

For the third week in a row the home side committed less than 10 errors and, as they managed to do on the Gold Coast, completed at more than 80 per cent to dominate possession.

As a result, the Raiders were forced to make a bigger defensive effort, with the extra workload contributing to them missing 38 tackles, while the Warriors ran for more than 600m more than Ricky Stuart-coached side.

After struggling to control the football inside their own territory or maintain their structures throughout the first half of the season, McFadden said his side had learned how to make life easier for themselves.

"I guess the penny's just dropped about what works for us," he said. "That's what happens when you don't make errors in your own half.

"If you make 10 more errors you make 100 more tackles so it has an effect on how you play and obviously the way you can defend. So we're keeping it tidy at the moment and our completion rate is high and obviously we're rolling through because of that."

McFadden highlighted the 36-4 loss to South Sydney in Perth three weeks ago, in which they bumbled their way through 17 mistakes to gift the Rabbitohs momentum, as the catalyst for the change in his side's mindset.

"You tend to learn a lot more from your losses than you do your wins sometimes and that gave us a really good insight into what we need to do.

"That Souths game we played good for 30 minutes but we just fell off what we really practised, so that's been our focus in the last three weeks and we've done that really well and we're getting results for it at the moment."

While they have done well to consolidate their seventh position, the Warriors are yet to beat a side above them in the top eight this season. After this week's bye round they face a tough run home with four of their remaining nine games against sides currently sitting in the top half of the ladder.

Unlike in previous years, McFadden believes they now have the fitness, confidence and playing stocks to further improve, and avoid the late season slide after the State of Origin period, which has spoiled recent campaigns.

"As a squad we're a lot more conditioned. Hopefully, if we can stay healthy, we're going to have that competition for spots ... when you've got that it keeps everyone on their toes and that helps drive performance."