Shakes and ladders: Wahs refuse to panic despite drop

Kurt Capewell says the Warriors are not obsessing about keeping their top-four spot for the NRL finals but he concedes his team needs to regain their form – and quickly. 

The Warriors held on to second spot for 14 weeks before three losses in their past six games combined with the Roosters winning five in a row put the Bondi club into second after Round 21. 

The Warriors are now third on the same points (30) as the Sharks in fourth with the Dolphins, Rabbitohs, Knights and Cowboys nipping at their heels.

Six clubs vying for three top-four spots behind the Panthers with six rounds left before September. 

“We’ve got to look inwards and not outwards too much about who we’re playing and what not,” Capewell told NRL.com after an 18-6 loss to the Bulldogs.

“We know we’re better than what we showed tonight. We’ll go home and work on it.” 

The Titans are next with another week of travel for the Warriors up to the Gold Coast. 

“Travel hasn’t been easy to be honest. We seem to be doing a lot this year but we have no control over that,” Capewell said. 

“We need to look at what we can control – how we train and how we play.” 

Dallin Watene-Zelezniak always seems to make the right-hand corner post his own – he’s third in the NRL for tries (17) – but he slipped over half-a metre from the line and then was bundled into touch by the Bulldogs in a second attempt. 

“You’ve got to give credit where it’s due and the Bulldogs turned up in defence,” Capewell said. 

“Dallin is one of the best in the game at finishing and they stopped him.” 

The Warriors were level-pegging with the Bulldogs in run metres, offloads and tackle busts but Cameron Ciraldo’s men were superior in line breaks (6-1).

"That’s the funny thing about stats is that they don’t always tell the truth about the game,” Capewell said. 

“We missed the start – they were really good in the first 20 and we didn’t really apply much pressure to them. 

“We gave them a leg-up there… and paid the price for that.” 

Since 2002 when the Warriors made the NRL grand final, they have made the finals eight times but only in the top four twice - in 2007 losing to the Cowboys in Week Two and in 2023 losing the preliminary final to Penrith. 

Coach Andrew Webster won't be wasting too much energy sweating about the ladder either.

“We never talk about that or look at the ladder saying, ‘we’ve got to win tonight to stay in the four’, nothing like that,” he said. 

“We’re searching each week for our best game, and we love it when we get close to it – we celebrate it – and we when we don’t we look to get better. 

“We know that each week if we bring our best, we’ll get what we want.” 

Capewell knows the run home is a most dangerous time with teams out of the eight playing freely and looking to upset the applecart of those above them.

“There’s no easy game in the NRL but at the end of the year the teams that are sort of out of contention throw caution to the wind,” he said. 

“To be fair it’s a pretty tight eight so there’s jostling for finishing positions in there too.

“Every team is going to show up – it’s dangerous – you have to be on your game each week and unfortunately tonight we weren’t.”