The Warriors have fallen just short of what would have been their second-ever minor premiership.<\/p>\n
Going into the 27th and final round of the regular season, the Warriors were clear of the Panthers by just one on points differential.<\/p>\n
They did just that, hammering the 15th-placed Tigers 38-10 in Sydney.<\/p>\n
Penrith ran in seven tries including a hat-trick to Kiwi forward Casey McLean.<\/p>\n
The result sees the Warriors finish in second, on 42 points with 18 wins and six losses.<\/p>\n
However, coach Andrew Webster has maintained his side is chasing a much bigger carrot in 2026.<\/p>\n
“There will be no one prouder if we happen to be minor premiers. It’s a historical trophy and we’d be proud of it but not at the expense of what we need to do,” Webster told media this week.<\/p>\n
The Warriors will meet the Redcliffe Dolphins in week one of the finals at Mount Smart at 6.05pm on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, the Panthers will host the Roosters on Sunday; the Rabbitohs will play the Knights on Friday; and the Sharks will be home to the Cowboys in Sydney, following the Warriors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Warriors have fallen just short of what would have been their second-ever minor premiership. Going into the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-591875","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\/591875","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=591875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}