The Warriors were unable to defeat the Cronulla Sharks last night – and that’s despite the Sharks having one player red-carded and another sin-binned.
Even with a 13-12 player advantage for nearly 60 minutes of the game held at PointsBet Stadium in Sydney, the New Zealand club suffered a 19 point loss, 29-10.
Cronulla were first to get points on the scoreboard. This happened on the right edge, with Storm-recruited halfback Nicho Hynes scoring in the seventh minute.
The red card came near the 17-minute mark by way of a clothesline high shot from Cronulla fullback Will Kennedy on his counterpart Reece Walsh. Though Walsh wasn’t fazed by it and returned to his feet, it was enough to see Kennedy jog to the sidelines unable to play the rest of the game.
A few minutes later, the Warriors capitalised on the one-player advantage, with two tries from winger Dallin Watene-Zelezniak and Viliami Vailea. Vailea’s try was Warriors magic thanks to Walsh breaking the line at 50 metres, flick passing to young five-eighth Daejarn Asi and chipping past Hynes for the centre to score four points.
Unfortunately, it was all the magic that the Warriors would conjure for the rest of the game. Kennedy’s outing saw Hynes shift to fullback, and the home side came back with second-rower Teig Wilton returning the favour with a line break of his own to score a try on the 29th minute.
The second half saw Connor Tracey score a pair of tries, first on the left wing in the 46th minute, then the other 20 minutes later thanks to a Hynes long pass. Within those 20 minutes, Sharks centre Jesse Ramien was sent to the bin for a high shot on Warriors second-rower Euan Aitken. Even with 11 Sharks players, the Warriors still couldn’t take advantage. It would come back to haunt them, as Hynes nailed a field goal right in front of the posts, and Ramien, having returned from the bin, made up for his outing with a try on the 76th minute.
Storm veterans at career milestones
Meanwhile, it was a milestone reached for Melbourne Storm second-rower Kenny Bromwich (Ngāti Porou, Ngāpuhi), having played his 200th NRL game in his team’s demolishing of the St George Illawarra Dragons yesterday.
Bromwich finished the game with 30 tackles (90.9% tackle efficiency), 96 metres and 35 post-contact metres.
The milestone was celebrated prior to the game with some of his fellow Kiwi Storm teammates Brandon Smith, Nelson Asofa-Solomona and brother/captain Jesse Bromwich and others honouring the veteran with a haka, received with his game jersey in front of his fellow teammates.
Asofa-Solomona also celebrated reaching three-quarters of the same milestone as Kenny, with 150 games. Like Bromwich, the Storm is the only club that Nelson has played for in his entire NRL career. The prop powerhouse helped in his team's victory by scoring a try of his own in the 67th minute.
All teams are now looking to Magic Round this week. With all games being played in Brisbane across the entire weekend starting on Friday, both the Warriors and Storm’s matches fall on Saturday. The Warriors will take on the South Sydney Rabbitohs to kick off Saturday’s festivities at 5pm NZ time, with the Storm to face the Penrith Panthers in a first versus second place clashing to end the night.