{"id":47902,"date":"2025-09-28T08:10:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T08:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/47902\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T08:10:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T08:10:07","slug":"nsw-cup-grand-final-warriors-beat-dragons-to-secure-maiden-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/47902\/","title":{"rendered":"NSW Cup grand final: Warriors beat Dragons to secure maiden title"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MtQqFgbmCbNYi\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cIt was a great season, but with that comes pressure and lots of people expected us to win it,\u201d said Going. <\/p>\n<p class=\"MtQqFgbmCbNYi\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cBut the pressure made us play to our best, and I feel like we capitalised on that.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"MtQqFgbmCbNYi\" style=\"display:none\">They will now feature as part of next Sunday\u2019s NRL grand final day, where they will face Queensland Cup winners, the Burleigh Bears in the State Championship final. <\/p>\n<p class=\"MtQqFgbmCbNYi\" style=\"display:none\">Thirteen of the Warriors\u2019 17 have NRL experience including Bunty Afoa, Tanah Boyd and Taine Tuaupiki. <\/p>\n<p class=\"MtQqFgbmCbNYi\" style=\"display:none\">The Warriors were first to score when Moala Graham-Taufa snuck over from dummy half, but it didn\u2019t take the Dragons long to hit back through Hayden Buchanan. <\/p>\n<p class=\"MtQqFgbmCbNYi\" style=\"display:none\">Two tries in three minutes to Setu Tu and Samuel Healey gave the Warriors a 16-6 lead at the break. <\/p>\n<p class=\"MtQqFgbmCbNYi\" style=\"display:none\">The Dragons opened the scoring in the second half through Haele Finau to get back in the contest, but momentum quickly swung back in the Warriors\u2019 favour after Lachlan Illias was sent to the sin-bin. <\/p>\n<p class=\"MtQqFgbmCbNYi\" style=\"display:none\">The Warriors made them pay with tries to Tu and Eddie Ieremia-Toeava putting the Dragons out of reach.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MtQqFgbmCbNYi\" style=\"display:none\">It was the Warriors\u2019 fourth appearance in the reserves final, having lost to the Sharks in 1996, and to the Bulldogs in 1997 and 2011, the latter when they were known as the Auckland Vulcans. <\/p>\n<p class=\"MtQqFgbmCbNYi\" style=\"display:none\">That year saw the Warriors U20s and men\u2019s side also play in their respective grand finals.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MtQqFgbmCbNYi\" style=\"display:none\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/author\/ben-francis\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/author\/ben-francis\/\" target=\"_blank\">Ben Francis<\/a> is an Auckland-based reporter for the New Zealand Herald who covers breaking sports news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt was a great season, but with that comes pressure and lots of people expected us to win&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[41725,4498,14796,5426,10542,41721,5904,1888,12856,10813,305,1861,41724,41722,111,139,3655,69,41723,24352,6102,1240,213,1734,2044,2563,61,1491,3006,18457],"class_list":["post-47902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-41725","tag-beat","tag-beating","tag-created","tag-cup","tag-dragons","tag-final","tag-first","tag-george","tag-grand","tag-have","tag-history","tag-illawarra","tag-maiden","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nsw","tag-nz","tag-reservegrade","tag-secure","tag-side","tag-south","tag-sports","tag-sydney","tag-time","tag-title","tag-to","tag-wales","tag-warriors","tag-winning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47902","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=47902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}