The battle for the NRL’s minor premiership is set to go down to the wire after the Warriors downed South Sydney 45-26 to go top of the table.<\/p>\n
With hooker Wayde Egan pulling all the strings at Stadium Australia, Andrew Webster’s side joined Penrith and the Sydney Roosters on 38 points.<\/p>\n
The Warriors (+295) needed to beat Souths by 19 points to move past the first-placed Panthers (+294) on points differential.<\/p>\n
And they did just that with rookie five-eighth Luke Hanson’s 80th-minute field goal getting the job done after the Bunnies nearly pulled off a spectacular second-half comeback.<\/p>\n
The Roosters (+163) have a game in hand and will play Wests Tigers on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Even if this was a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde performance from the Warriors, Webster’s side, who lost winger Dallin Watene-Zelezniak to a shoulder injury, showed signs that could be a genuine contender to be back at Saturday’s venue come grand final day.<\/p>\n
Deploying fourth-choice No. 6 Hanson with Chanel Harris-Tavita, the Warriors hit the Rabbitohs with a sledgehammer in the first 20 minutes with tries to James Fisher-Harris, Leka Halasima and Mitch Barnett.<\/p>\n
Jack Wighton and Alex Johnston hit back for the Bunnies before Harris-Tavita backed up a blistering Eddie Ieremia-Toeava break to put the Warriors back in the box seat.<\/p>\n
Fullback Taine Tuaupiki converted Harris-Tavita’s try and then added a penalty to give the Warriors a 26-8 halftime lead.<\/p>\n
Watene-Zelezniak crashed in on the right straight after the break, before trudging off.<\/p>\n
Souths’ problems were only amplified by their struggles from the tee, with Jayden Sullivan missing both of his first-half efforts.<\/p>\n
But the playmaker made no mistake with his next three as Johnston, Cody Walker and Tallis Duncan all crossed in a 12-minute onslaught.<\/p>\n
The Bunnies were just six points behind with 20 minutes left, but tries for Jacob Laban and Alofiana Khan-Pereira moved the Warriors out of sight.<\/p>\n
Leading by 18 heading into the final minute, Hanson showed a calmness by receiving an inside ball from Harris-Tavita and slotting a one pointer from 30m out.<\/p>\n
The Warriors host Newcastle and Manly over the final two rounds, while Penrith face Canterbury and Wests Tigers.<\/p>\n
The Roosters square off with the Dolphins and Souths to round of their regular season.<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The battle for the NRL’s minor premiership is set to go down to the wire after the Warriors…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":864354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,4026,4027,7992,160,158,1654,159,4523,161,85,3198],"class_list":["post-864353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bulldogs","tag-dragons","tag-knights","tag-live-blog","tag-nrl","tag-rabbitohs","tag-rugby-league","tag-sea-eagles","tag-season","tag-sports","tag-warriors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864353","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=864353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/864354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}