League: Pre-season hit-out boosts Warriors

Simon Mannering
Simon Mannering
The Warriors have eased through their final pre-season hit-out with an injury-free 42-14 win over their NSW Cup team the Auckland Vulcans.

Captain Simon Mannering, centre Konrad Hurrell and prop Jacob Lillyman survived their first outings of the pre-season campaign with no issues.

Hurrell scored two tries, while Mannering picked up one and Lillyman clocked up some much-needed time as he returns from an off-season knee operation.

The trial, played in front of a crowd of about 2000, was run over an hour, broken into three periods of 20 minutes.

Ultimately the NRL combination ran away with the hit-out on the points-scoring front, but it didn't shape that way early on when the Vulcans opened the scoring, new centre Jonathan Wright racing onto a grubber.

It took some time for the top side to settle into any sort of rhythm, but eventually they found form.

Manu Vatuvei was released down the left edge to score, then Hurrell rampaged down the right in his first outing since off-season wrist surgery.

The NRL side ran in five tries in the second 20-minute spell, with Sam Tomkins, Nathan Friend, Solomone Kata, Hurrell and Mannering all crossing.

The other dominant feature of the trial was provided by NRL referees Adam Devcich and Gavin Reynolds, who whistled a solid flow of penalties as they gave the players another taste of the new law interpretations.

As was the case in Rotorua last week against Penrith, there were a lot of penalties for offences in the tackle.

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