The New Zealand Warriors have had the up-and-down reputation of a yo-yo for the last couple of years - you're never quite sure what you're going to see from the men across the ditch.
Warriors captain Simon Mannering, speaking after his side's 37-6 defeat to the Cronulla Sharks on Saturday afternoon, said it is a reputation his side is proud of yet he is not sure as to why they are constantly inconsistent.
"We've started our first two games [of the season] pretty ordinary and played the last two not too bad and we were building but today we have taken a few steps backwards. I can't put my finger on anything on our preparation, so we definitely need to find the answer because we can't be going up-and-down throughout the year," Mannering said.
"Even being down at half-time we knew we could score the points but scoring points wasn't going to be the problem – it was our defence. For us, if we're going to get consistency our defence has to be our main focus. Today we let in over 35 points and that's nowhere near good enough."
Warriors coach Matthew Elliott certainly didn't see his side's poor performance coming and believes that it was almost impossible to get into the game considering the amount of his errors his men were conceding.
"The last two weeks we completed over 80 per cent [of our sets] and today I think we finished up under 50 [per cent], so we put ourselves under an immense amount of pressure and the opposition took advantage of it," Elliott said.
"I certainly didn't see any of that in our preparation at all. We're definitely going to have to do some heavy research into that.
"To be frank, I was confident we were still in the game. We came out with errors in our first three offensive sets and our first three defensive sets after half-time and again we just kept building pressure on ourselves instead of our opposition."
While Elliott was clearly disappointed with the end result, he did manage to produce a positive side from their trip to Remondis Stadium but insists at the end of the day it still isn't enough to win you a game of NRL football.
"One of the things that wasn't absent was a heap of effort. We just had to put far too much effort in defensively. I would say quite comfortably across the board that the defensive effort from 90 per cent of our guys was exactly where it needed to be," Elliott said.
"Ninety per cent still not high enough, so the turnaround [for next weekend's game against the Bulldogs] is really about cutting out the errors we made and compete at the same level that we did last week and we'll give ourselves an opportunity to compete.
"Today we denied ourselves that opportunity – you can't compete when you make that amount of errors – it's not possible."
Warriors captain Simon Mannering, speaking after his side's 37-6 defeat to the Cronulla Sharks on Saturday afternoon, said it is a reputation his side is proud of yet he is not sure as to why they are constantly inconsistent.
"We've started our first two games [of the season] pretty ordinary and played the last two not too bad and we were building but today we have taken a few steps backwards. I can't put my finger on anything on our preparation, so we definitely need to find the answer because we can't be going up-and-down throughout the year," Mannering said.
"Even being down at half-time we knew we could score the points but scoring points wasn't going to be the problem – it was our defence. For us, if we're going to get consistency our defence has to be our main focus. Today we let in over 35 points and that's nowhere near good enough."
Warriors coach Matthew Elliott certainly didn't see his side's poor performance coming and believes that it was almost impossible to get into the game considering the amount of his errors his men were conceding.
"The last two weeks we completed over 80 per cent [of our sets] and today I think we finished up under 50 [per cent], so we put ourselves under an immense amount of pressure and the opposition took advantage of it," Elliott said.
"I certainly didn't see any of that in our preparation at all. We're definitely going to have to do some heavy research into that.
"To be frank, I was confident we were still in the game. We came out with errors in our first three offensive sets and our first three defensive sets after half-time and again we just kept building pressure on ourselves instead of our opposition."
While Elliott was clearly disappointed with the end result, he did manage to produce a positive side from their trip to Remondis Stadium but insists at the end of the day it still isn't enough to win you a game of NRL football.
"One of the things that wasn't absent was a heap of effort. We just had to put far too much effort in defensively. I would say quite comfortably across the board that the defensive effort from 90 per cent of our guys was exactly where it needed to be," Elliott said.
"Ninety per cent still not high enough, so the turnaround [for next weekend's game against the Bulldogs] is really about cutting out the errors we made and compete at the same level that we did last week and we'll give ourselves an opportunity to compete.
"Today we denied ourselves that opportunity – you can't compete when you make that amount of errors – it's not possible."
