The Warriors will now have to take the scenic route to the NRL grand final, after bowing to the Dolphins 26-16 on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
After finishing second, to earn homefield advantage for the opening round of the playoffs, the Warriors could not take advantage of their fan support and a penalty advantage that had them 12-8 ahead at halftime.<\/p>\n
Their only try of the game came when fullback Taine Tuaupiki spun out of a tackle near the line and scooted clear to score. Tuaupiki scored all the Warriors’ points, adding a conversion and five penalties, as his team chose to kick for goal, instead of push for tries in the redzone.<\/p>\n
They probably should have led by more at the break, but Tuaupiki stretched the margin beyond a converted try, with two more penalties in the second half, before the Dolphins piled on three unanswered converted tries in the final 20 minutes.<\/p>\n
The Warriors’ cause was not helped by ill-discipline, as centre Adam Pompey was sin-binned for a no-arms shoulder tackle and then second-rower Kurt Capewell was matched for sparking a melee just before halftime.<\/p>\n
Dolphins wing Selwyn Cobbo was also sent to the bin in the same incident, after Jackson Ford was dumped in a tipping tackle and the teams came together.<\/p>\n
The Warriors lost centre Leka Halasima to injury during the warm-up, with Pompey promoted to the starting line-up in his place.<\/p>\n
The Dolphins were good for their win, scoring four tries to the Warriors’ one, all converted by wing Jamayne Isaako, and they will now take a rest next week, as they await their opponents for a preliminary final in two weeks.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Warriors will host Newcastle Knights next week.<\/p>\n
The result broke a six-game winning streak and marked the first time this season they have lost, after leading at halftime.<\/p>\n
See how the action unfolded, below:<\/p>\n
1. Taine Tuaupiki, 2. Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad, 3. Ali Leiataua, 4. Leka Halasima, 5. Alofiana Khan-Pereira, 6. Chanel Harris-Tavita, 7. Te Maire Martin, 8. James Fisher-Harris, 9. Wayde Egan, 10. Mitchell Barnett, 11. Kurt Capewell, 12. Jacob Laban, 13. Erin Clark<\/p>\n
Interchange: 14. Sam Healey, 15. Tanner Stowers-Smith, 16. Demitric Vaimauga, 17. Jackson Ford, 18. Eddie Ieremia-Toeava, 20. Adam Pompey<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Warriors will now have to take the scenic route to the NRL grand final, after bowing to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-598037","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\/598037","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=598037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}