Rugby league: How Shaun Johnson's influence has begun to turn the tide for the Warriors
The Warriors have been slowly crafting a strategy in recent weeks to improve their game on the NRL pitch.
A fortnight ago, the club dropped a winnable game against the Gold Coast Titans due to some clumsy errors. The week after, they scratched out a win over Wests Tigers, and on Saturday, pulled off a well-executed victory over the Brisbane Broncos.
The 20-6 win was an impressive display of formulating a plan and putting it in motion, and something the club struggled to do last year.
Warriors coach
Nathan Brown admitted they had planned to scale back their approach, looking to roll out a simple but effective game plan which backed their halves to put them in the right areas of the field, and their forwards to muscle up against a good Broncos pack.
It was executed perfectly, with
Shaun Johnson showing why he was such a big addition to this team through his game management, ably assisted by halves partner
Chanel Harris-Tavita.
"He's a very experienced player in a position where they're hard to find," Brown said of
Johnson.
"We're probably lucky in a way that Shaun is from the Warriors and wanted to come home, because when they come on the market, those types of blokes with that skill and experience, it's hard for a club trying to go up the ladder to attract those players.
"It's not easy, and to get Shaun, we'd like to think from this week to next week, his game will continue to grow. He's certainly got a very good skillset to play the position with the experience he's gained over the years."
The Warriors stuck to their decision for a scaled-back brand of football throughout the contest, conceding only one try from a piece of magic by Broncos halfback Adam Reynolds, while having more possession and completing 80 per cent of their sets. They also limited their error rate and penalty count.
In the past, the Warriors have been known for their willingness to throw the ball around and bring chaos into their attack to find some space in the opposition defensive line. While it has brought some success, Brown said after their start to the season, it would be a matter of stripping back their game and adding to it layer by layer in the hopes of being at the right end of the pack come September.
"We didn't expect to go out there and play our greatest brand of footy as far as entertaining. We scored a couple of nice tries but we certainly scaled our game back," Brown said after the win over Brisbane.
"Where we're at, do we need to play more footy? We certainly do. You can't beat blokes just trying to bash it up the middle all the time.
"We certainly need to play a bit more, but we grinded out a tough one against the Tigers, but we had a lot of issues which we've had to start the year with, errors at the wrong time, and weren't playing footy at the right time. So we scaled it back, and now we're definitely better than last week, and next week, we hope to improve a little bit again."
The Warriors are going back to basics in order to build success.
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