The Warriors’ top-four dream is threatening to slip away after a 32-14 loss to Canterbury continued their disastrously timed form slump ahead of the NRL finals.<\/p>\n
Saturday night’s loss in rainy Sydney caps a poor month for the depleted Kiwi side, who will finish a weekend outside the top four for the first time since round six.<\/p>\n
Now in fifth, the Warriors’ top-four hopes have been left to rely on red-hot Penrith losing once on the run home – assuming they win all four of their own remaining games.<\/p>\n
That is easier said than done for the Warriors who have lost their last three matches and have watched the Panthers, 17th after round 12, jump into fourth.<\/p>\n
To make matters worse, Te Maire Martin will join an already busy casualty ward after a head knock 23 minutes into his first game replacing Tanah Boyd at halfback.<\/p>\n
Martin will miss next week’s clash with giant-killers St George Illawarra, who could leave the Warriors as low as seventh on the ladder by the end of round 24.<\/p>\n
They are still not guaranteed to play finals.<\/p>\n
Canterbury’s three biggest losses this season have all come in the wet, but the Bulldogs finally mastered the slippery conditions before 25,377 home fans.<\/p>\n
They remain in the hunt for a top-two spot, only behind second-placed Melbourne on points differential.<\/p>\n
After three early penalty goals between the sides in the driving rain, the Bulldogs began to control territory on the back of Matt Burton’s boot.<\/p>\n
Bailey Hayward replaced North Queensland-bound Reed Mahoney at starting hooker as a possible glimpse into the Bulldogs’ future.<\/p>\n
Mahoney only made it on in the final 16 minutes when the result appeared beyond doubt.<\/p>\n
Hayward sent a short ball from dummy half for Viliame Kikau to score the Bulldogs’ first try, the big man slipping over attempting a left-foot step and sliding to the tryline.<\/p>\n
Errors hurt the Warriors and put the Bulldogs in position to score their second on the left through rookie winger Jethro Rinakama.<\/p>\n
On the back of two repeat sets, Enari Tuala dived over on the right in the final 90 seconds of the first half to lift the scoreline to 20-2 and leave the Warriors at sea.<\/p>\n
A crisp pass from Jacob Kiraz helped Tuala to his second as the final 10 minutes approached.<\/p>\n
In his fourth NRL game, Sam Healey had his first try with a kick for himself out of dummy half, before a late Roger Tuivasa-Sheck intercept try put some respectability on the scoreboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Warriors’ top-four dream is threatening to slip away after a 32-14 loss to Canterbury continued their disastrously…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-55334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}