{"id":532834,"date":"2026-07-18T22:32:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T22:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/532834\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T22:32:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T22:32:15","slug":"warriors-grind-out-gutwrenching-win-over-lowly-dragons-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/532834\/","title":{"rendered":"Warriors grind out gutwrenching win over lowly Dragons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Warriors needed the boot of five-eighth Chanel Harris-Tavita to edge clear of St George-Illawarra Dragons 20-12 at Auckland&#8217;s Go Media Stadium.<\/p>\n<p>By Grant Chapman of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/sport\/740643\/warriors-grind-out-gutwrenching-win-over-lowly-dragons\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">RNZ<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In a nervy encounter with the NRL cellar dwellers, the home side trailled 12-10 at halftime and scored the only try of the second half to poke their noses in front five minutes into the second half.<\/p>\n<p>The Dragons never gave up and seemed to have hit the lead again, when former Warriors reserve-grader Setu Tu broke down the right sideline and evaded defenders from all angles to score.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone in the stadium had seen he was actually held in a tackle about 10 metres out from the tryline, before slipping out again, and eventually referee Chris Butler and the bunker spotted it too, disallowing the four-pointer.<\/p>\n<p>Entering the final 10 minutes still just two points ahead, the Warriors took full toll of the penalties awarded in the attacking half, with Harris-Tavita slotting two in the dying moments to seal victory.<\/p>\n<p>Centre Adam Pompey opened the scoring in the fourth minute, when he slid over for a try, but the two teams swapped the lead through the opening 40 minutes, with wing Alofiana Khan-Pereira crossing for the Warriors&#8217; second try before the break.<\/p>\n<p>Upon the resumption, wing Dallin Watene-Zelezniak scored in the other corner to put his team ahead for good.<\/p>\n<p>The result sees the Warriors regain second spot on the competition ladder, ahead of Sydney Roosters on points differential and only two points behind leaders Penrith Panthers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Warriors needed the boot of five-eighth Chanel Harris-Tavita to edge clear of St George-Illawarra Dragons 20-12 at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39,3006],"class_list":["post-532834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-warriors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532834","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=532834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}