NZ Warriors have overcome another injury to star halfback Luke Metcalf to dominate reigning NRL champions the Brisbane Broncos 40-6 and consolidate their top-four spot on the competition table.<\/p>\n
Enjoying strong support at their second ‘home’, Suncorp Stadium, the Warriors quickly found their stride, with second-rower Jacob Laban and five-eighth Chanel Harris-Tavita crossing for early tries.<\/p>\n
They lost fullback Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad to the sin bin for a hipdrop tackle that sent counterpart Reece Walsh out of the game with an ankle injury, but wing Alofiana Khan-Pereira intercepted a pass on his own goal-line and sprinted the length of the field to extend the margin.<\/p>\n
Metcalf slotted the conversion, but immediately grabbed his right hamstring and left the field, leaving his team in disarray as they reorganised their backline.<\/p>\n
Two penalties to Harris-Tavita saw the Warriors earn a 20-0 halftime advantage, before Nicoll-Klokstad scored early in the second half to continue the avalanche of points.<\/p>\n
Wing Dallin Watene-Zelezniak scored with a trademark dive at the corner flag and centre Ali Leiataua taunted the defence with a palmed dummy pass, before powering over himself.<\/p>\n
As the scoreboard ticked over, the Warriors drew within eight points of the second-placed Penrith Panthers on points differential, but conceded a soft try to Kiwis front-rower Xavier Willison that set them back.<\/p>\n
Centre Leka Halasima began to cramp up late, but shrugged that off to save a try and then score one himself at the other end, as the Warriors had the final say.<\/p>\n
They remain in third place on the ladder, two points behind leaders Sydney Roosters and level with the Panthers, trailling by 10 on differential.<\/p>\n
See how the action unfolded below:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NZ Warriors have overcome another injury to star halfback Luke Metcalf to dominate reigning NRL champions the Brisbane…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-569976","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"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569976","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=569976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}