Credit / nrl.com
The Warriors showed exciting glimpses of the "positive footie" they want to play this season but in the end were undone by the Dragons 16-28 in their season opener on Queensland's Sunshine Coast on Saturday night.
Down 0-12 early in the game, the Warriors fought back to trail 10-14 at halftime and edge ahead 16-14 after the break. But, as Warriors coach Nathan Brown says, they failed to push on from there.
"When we got to 16-14, considering the amount of field position the Dragons had had, to get there was a good effort by the boys," Brown said in his post-match media conference with Warriors captain Addin Fonua-Blake.
"I thought to get to that stage was a really good effort and then we missed our chance there and we just sort of lost our way a little bit."
Brown says the team was focused on starting the season well but were affected by errors and poor decision-making.
"It was quite clear from the start of the game we want to play a fairly positive brand of footie this year and we just didn't quite get it right today at times."
"The whole game we had a fair number of errors. The whole game we never quite got our game going."
The turnover of ball from errors and failure to put the Dragons under concerted pressure meant the Warriors were forced to defend much more than the visitors, while the Dragons stayed "fresher" and better able to mount attacks, says Brown.
"We certainly never made the Dragons have to work very hard, the way we controlled the ball."
"We didn't really tire their defence much at all really," he says. "We got to a stage where we were obviously under some heavy fatigue there due to our own inability to build some pressure."
On the upside, Brown says he is seeing improvement from last season.
"Some of our defence was really good. I think we're definitely looking a little bit better than we were this time last year, but again it's not to the level we consistently need it to be, to be a good footie team at the moment."
Fonua-Blake, who says he "definitely" believes the Warriors can get better, perhaps summed up the performance best.
"It's not the start we wanted, we were a bit scratchy, but there were patches there where we were good. The bad patches were way worse than what we wanted."
Warriors 16 (Dallin Watene-Zelezniak, Josh Curran, Eli Katoa tries; Shaun Johnson 2 cons). Dragons 28 (Mikaele Ravalawa 3, Jack Bird, Moses Mbye tries; Zac Lomax 3 cons, pen)
Halftime 10-14