Coach Andrew Webster has lashed out at criticism surrounding Adam Pompey, calling those who disapproved of the Warriors centre “absolute idiots”. <\/p>\n
Ahead of New Zealand’s crucial 46-32 victory against Newcastle on Sunday, Pompey had been at the centre of a social media storm following a subpar performance against South Sydney the week before. <\/p>\n
A flurry of hate comments piled on the centre as social media users levelled criticism of his decisions and defensive mishaps. <\/p>\n
When Webster heard about the online disapproval, he was left stunned.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t know about that. No one told me that. That’s probably a weakness of mine,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I’m not aware of these things, but he didn’t show any signs this week. He looked like he was always ready. <\/p>\n
“We left him stranded several times last week against Cody Walker. That’s their supercar. <\/p>\n
“They’re idiots, like absolute idiots.”<\/p>\n
Pompey was relegated from the starting centre role to the bench for Sunday’s match but still scored a try and assisted another at Go Media Stadium.<\/p>\n
His contributions helped the Warriors virtually lock in a home qualifying final and kept their hopes of winning a first minor premiership in 24 years alive.<\/p>\n
New Zealand (40 points, +309) will need to beat Manly on Saturday and hope second-placed Penrith (40 points, +308) lose or win by a smaller margin than them to seal top spot.<\/p>\n
Webster will also have to deal with a fresh halves conundrum after debutant Jett Cleary (three try assists, 220 kick metres) and rookie Luke Hanson both shone on Sunday. <\/p>\n
The young pair formed the club’s ninth spine combination this season as the Warriors are currently without Tanah Boyd (knee) and Luke Metcalf (hamstring).<\/p>\n
Halfback Te Maire Martin looked to return from a hamstring injury on Sunday, but the coach opted to play it safe while Chanel Harris-Tavita was also sidelined because of a hamstring niggle incurred during the week. <\/p>\n
“We had every intention of Chanel and Te Maire playing [on Sunday],” Webster said.<\/p>\n
“No one re-injured anything. Chanel pulled up last week with a tight hamstring. We thought he’d be OK. <\/p>\n
“It was just a process where we knew that we were going to send them out there and risk a long-term hamstring injury for both of them … We had faith in our young guys.” <\/p>\n
Whether they will return for the all-important clash on Saturday remains to be seen, but the club will sweat on the fitness of winger Luke Laulilii, who failed his HIA on Sunday after a clash with prop Jacob Saifiti.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coach Andrew Webster has lashed out at criticism surrounding Adam Pompey, calling those who disapproved of the Warriors…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,577,69,213,3006],"class_list":["post-585410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nrl","tag-nz","tag-sports","tag-warriors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585410","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=585410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}