NRL: Warriors keen to build on Kiwis' win

Thomas Leuluai is determined to carry confidence from the Kiwis' Anzac test win over to the Warriors. Photo / Greg Bowker

Line defence is a big focus for New Zealanders as they eye up clash with Sharks.

Hooker Thomas Leuluai says the Warriors can take confidence out of the Kiwis' Anzac test win but transferring that winning momentum to the NRL is far from straight forward.

The Warriors' Kiwis contingent have returned to their club environment with their tails up and hopeful of bringing their enthusiasm from the New Zealand camp back with them.

Leuluai says the best way they can do that is by being energetic in their play and producing the same amount of effort as the Kiwis did in last Sunday's transtasman win.

"I know a lot of people see that Kiwis performance and think, 'How do you transfer that?' but it's a different team and a different competition," Leuluai said.

"The whole environment is different but as individuals we can get a lot of confidence from it.

"To be fair, we haven't been going too bad there, so the main thing is our energy and putting in those sorts of performances for our club."

The best way to demonstrate that effort is in defence, Leuluai said, reiterating the point that the Warriors are focused on showing greater willingness when protecting their line.

"It's the other side of the ball, defence," he said. "That's our biggest improvement as a club.

"We don't have any trouble in attack, we're second in points scored so that's not a problem but defensively we're down the bottom.

"We need to start showing more steel on our line because we're leaking too many points there.

"Line defence has been a big focus and we've trained pretty well and hopefully we can take that on to the field," Leuluai said.

Warriors prop and test teammate Ben Matulino revealed Leuluai had been in his ear following the Kiwis Suncorp Stadium success, urging them to bring a confident and united front back to the Warriors.

"Tommy spoke to me and said we'll try and bring the energy we got out of the Kiwis into our camp," Matulino explained.

"Just to brighten things up and bring the same kind of energy and we did that at training which was pretty good."

After back-to-back losses to the North Queensland Cowboys and Gold Coast Titans, Matulino insisted the Warriors remained confident they can get things back on track in tonight's away clash with the Cronulla Sharks.

"There's no panic. We know that we're close to getting it right and that's mostly to do with errors when we're coming out of our own half.

"We're scoring enough points to win games but obviously our defence is not holding up the way it should."