Luckless Warriors half Luke Metcalf has suffered yet another injury in a 40-6 thrashing of hapless reigning premiers Brisbane, who lost their own superstar Reece Walsh to a potentially season-ending ankle issue.<\/p>\n
The third-placed Warriors drew level on competition points with Penrith in second place, but are now poised to lose another playmaker on the run to the NRL finals.<\/p>\n
Metcalf clutched at his right hamstring after landing the conversion for the Warriors’ third try and cut a devastated figure leaving the field in Brisbane on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
One of the NRL’s most injury-plagued players, Metcalf is set for scans to determine his return-to-play timeline.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, he was very emotional at the start but he’s come good in that sense,” said Warriors coach Andrew Webster.<\/p>\n
“I’m sure he’s hurting but he’s been a good teammate. At halftime, he joined the team, sat down with them. We don’t know any more about the injury.”<\/p>\n
Overlooked for most of the season, Metcalf had been playing only his second game since April after starring in last week’s defeat of the Panthers.<\/p>\n
But the St George Illawarra recruit’s dream of leaving the Warriors as a premiership winner is now in doubt, just when he appeared back in favour at the New Zealand club.<\/p>\n
Minutes before Metcalf’s new injury, Walsh was crunched in a hip-drop tackle that landed Warriors fullback Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad in the sin bin.<\/p>\n
Walsh initially attempted to play on, but in his next involvement he threw an intercept that allowed winger Alofiana Khan-Pereira to streak away and score.<\/p>\n
He left the field as Khan-Pereira’s try put the Warriors up three scores and on the way to a fifth victory in six games.<\/p>\n
Brisbane’s finals hopes are well and truly over, but Walsh’s injury may also impact his hopes of playing for Australia at the World Cup from October.<\/p>\n
Broncos coach Michael Maguire was unsure of the injury’s severity immediately after the Broncos’ 12th loss from 13 starts.<\/p>\n
The Broncos were never in Saturday’s contest, but a furious Maguire said it was “garbage” to suggest his side could be struggling for motivation in the final month of a dismal season.<\/p>\n
“The boys are playing for the Broncos. They’ve got a badge that they wear. That is not good enough,” Maguire said.<\/p>\n
“I normally keep my cool but we need to have a good, hard look at ourselves and get into the game the way we know we can, or we’ll get exactly the same next week.”<\/p>\n
Earlier, the Warriors made a fast start and scored first as Jacob Laban grabbed Wayde Egan’s pass and snuck outside Ezra Mam to the tryline.<\/p>\n
Metcalf batted the ball on for five-eighth Chanel Harris-Tavita to step twice through traffic and nab the Warriors’ second try as they took a 20-0 lead into halftime.<\/p>\n
The Warriors’ Maori stars electrified after the break in Indigenous Round, with Nicoll-Klokstad touching down from a kick and Dallin Watene-Zelezniak finishing acrobatically in the right corner.<\/p>\n
The Warriors may need to call on Luke Hanson for a second NRL game next week, given fellow halfback options Te Maire Martin (hamstring) and Tanah Boyd (knee) are both out.<\/p>\n
Another option is to shift Nicoll-Klokstad from fullback and into the halves until Martin returns in coming weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luckless Warriors half Luke Metcalf has suffered yet another injury in a 40-6 thrashing of hapless reigning premiers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213,3006],"class_list":["post-570204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports","tag-warriors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570204","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=570204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}