Wests Tigers coach Benji Marshall expects the Warriors to be brimming with confidence as the Kiwi club eyes its best opening month to an NRL season in history.<\/p>\n
The ladder-leading Warriors enter Friday night’s round-four clash at a sold-out Mt Smart Stadium on the back of three consecutive wins to start 2026.<\/p>\n
Halfback Tanah Boyd and middle forward Jackson Ford have been in career-best form for the Warriors, who have scored more points than any side in the competition so far.<\/p>\n
Mitch Barnett returned from an anterior cruciate ligament injury to set up a try in last week’s defeat of Newcastle, while talented Luke Metcalf is back from his own ACL lay-off to line up with Boyd in the halves this week.<\/p>\n
“The Warriors have been playing some really good footy, obviously three from three to start the season, and probably high on confidence,” said Marshall.<\/p>\n
A win over the Tigers would mark only the second time in their 32-year history the Warriors have won four consecutive games to begin a season.<\/p>\n
The last time the side achieved the feat in 2018, they went on to break a seven-year finals drought with Roger Tuivasa-Sheck becoming the club’s first and only Dally M Medallist and David Fusitu’a finishing as the league’s top tryscorer.<\/p>\n
With a victory on Friday, the Warriors’ current start to the season would pip 2018 on points differential and become their best opening month on record.<\/p>\n
New Zealand rugby league legend Marshall said the Tigers would not become distracted.<\/p>\n
“For us, it’s not about the Warriors,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I will talk to the team about making sure we do the things we need to do and play our style and play our game.”<\/p>\n
Marshall had faith in five-eighth Jock Madden replacing “energiser bunny” Jarome Luai, who will miss a month with his knee injury.<\/p>\n
Madden last played first grade with Brisbane in July 2024. <\/p>\n
“[Madden] has got some really big strengths of his own that we’re looking forward to seeing him put out there,” Marshall said.<\/p>\n
“Everyone has injuries, Newcastle are going through a similar thing at the moment. <\/p>\n
“All you’ve got to do is put systems in place that no matter who comes in, everyone knows their job and the way you want to play.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wests Tigers coach Benji Marshall expects the Warriors to be brimming with confidence as the Kiwi club eyes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,111,139,577,69,213,3006],"class_list":["post-349467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-australia","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nrl","tag-nz","tag-sports","tag-warriors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}