As referee Grant Atkins blew for fulltime on the Warriors’ NRL season, Wayde Egan admits there was mixed emotions.
There was a sense of disappointment as their 2025 campaign was over after a 24-8 NRL elimination final defeat to the Penrith Panthers in Auckland, but on the other hand there was sense of pride after what the club had achieved.
Before a ball had been kicked, many had picked the Warriors to pick up their maiden wooden spoon, and those calls appeared justified after losing to the Canberra Raiders in the season opener in Las Vegas.
But they battled back to sit with a 9-3 record in third at the halfway point of the season, before disaster struck in the space of a month, losing co-captain Mitch Barnett, and halfback Luke Metcalf to ACL injuries.
The injury bug hurt the Warriors badly in the second half of the season where at one stage, a third of their first-choice squad was sidelined. They ultimately limped into the playoffs, surrendering their strong position inside the NRL’s top four where they spent 19 weeks across the 27 rounds to finish sixth.
While knowing their season is over is a tough pill to swallow, Warriors hooker Egan told the Herald that the squad should hang their heads high, as any other team would have struggled in their shoes.
“You would have liked to finish in the top four, but credit to us for hanging in there,” Egan said. “Losing Barnes [Barnett] and Mets [Metcalf] halfway through the year I don’t think many teams could have done what we did and still hung in there.
“If you take [Nathan] Cleary and [Isaah] Yeo out of Penrith, what happens to them? So it’s a credit to us for fighting on. Disappointing, but we showed a lot of heart.
“But we had enough troops to do a job. That’s no excuse, but in hindsight, losing two very influential players makes a difference. If you take influential players out of any team, the story changes.”
Heading into the match against the four-time reigning NRL champion Panthers, the Warriors were completely written off, but they held their own in the opening exchanges and were very unlucky not to have scored a couple of tries, as they trailed 6-2 at the break.
A try to Leka Halasima saw the Warriors trailing by four points heading into the final 20 minutes, but two tries against the run of play saw the Panthers hang on for a gritty win.
The Panthers’ third try was the one which broke the camel’s back when Paul Alamoti somehow contrived to keep the ball in play then get out of his in-goal, before a wicked bounce from a Cleary kick caught out the Warriors’ back three, with Casey McLean finishing off the long-range move.
“Obviously not the result we wanted, but for most of the game we were right in it,” Egan said. “I thought we were the better team in patches too, which hurts.
“They scored a couple of tries where the ball just favoured them, and that’s footy, isn’t it? When you’ve got someone like Nathan Cleary kicking, good things tend to happen. There were some unlucky bounces, but we probably shouldn’t have put ourselves in that position.
“We’ve been written off all year and even going into this game people said we’d get beat by 50. But this group doesn’t have that in us. We’re a tough, resilient bunch.”
Egan arguably had his best season at the Warriors to date where he featured in 21 games, scoring two tries, making 93% of his tackles, while claiming a career-high of 1263 run metres.
The match was also his 150th NRL match with 121 of those coming at the Warriors. His family came over from Australia for the occasion and presented him with his jersey.
“One hundred and fifty games feels like 500 on the body, but it’s a special moment,” Egan said.
“I thought I had a decent year. Picked up a few niggles at the back end, which didn’t help, but that’s footy.
“I think we’ve grown a lot as a team. The young guys really stepped up. With so many injuries they got to debut earlier, played a lot of footy, and they’ll be better for it. I can’t wait to see what they can do next year.”
Ben Francis is an Auckland-based reporter for the New Zealand Herald who covers breaking sports news.