Makeshift wing Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad emerged as an unlikely hero, scoring four tries to inspire his NZ Warriors to a 38-20 win over the North Queensland Cowboys at Christchurch’s new Te Kaha stadium.<\/p>\n
The veteran fullback, who has missed much of the NRL season with a neck injury, almost had a fifth try, which was ruled out for a forward pass in the build-up, as an injury-depleted Warriors outfit showed courage to grind out the victory.<\/p>\n
That success may have come at a cost though, with star front-rower Jackson Ford leaving the contest early with a torn pec that may sideline him for several weeks.<\/p>\n
Nicoll-Klokstad singlehandedly had his team ahead 14-10 at halftime, with three of his tries in the opening 40 minutes, then added another shortly after the restart.<\/p>\n
The Warriors saw an early 10-0 break erased by tries to wing Braidon Burns and fullback Scott Drinkwater for the Cowboys, but Nicoll-Klokstad’s fourth pushed the margin back out to double figures.<\/p>\n
When powerhouse Jason Taumalolo was sin-binned for a dangerous tackle on Nicoll-Klokstad, the home side capitalised, with right wing Dallin Watene-Zelezniak sharing in the spoils.<\/p>\n
They also benefitted from a strange bunker call that confirmed a try to centre Adam Pompey, when fullback Taine Tuaupiki appeared to knock on in a midair contest, but moments later, Tuaupiki joined the celebration with a try of his own.<\/p>\n
All attention will now centre on Ford’s prognosis, with halfback Tanah Boyd and centre Roger Tuivasa-Sheck already ruled out for the season, and front-rower James Fisher-Harris and second-rower Leka Halasima also nursing injuries.<\/p>\n
The Warriors break a two-game slump and travel to Brisbane next Saturday to face a Dolphins outfit on a seven-game winning streak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Makeshift wing Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad emerged as an unlikely hero, scoring four tries to inspire his NZ Warriors to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-488101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488101","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=488101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}