Warriors 14 Manly 20

MANLY captain Matt Orford admitted the game "was not pleasant", and nor will be the wait Brent Kite must endure for the judiciary to study his 64th-minute tackle on Warriors centre Brent Tate.

Kite scored the winning try for the Sea Eagles in this dreary fixture and performed well enough again to demand consideration from the NSW selectors. But he was placed on report for catching Tate high and can expect disciplinary attention. Kite said he was wrong-footed by a right-foot step and was "pretty confident" of escaping censure. He was much less forthcoming on Origin III, declaring: "That Origin stuff, now, I've just put it to the back of my mind."

So the spruiking was left to his teammates. Orford reckoned there was not one, but two Blues candidates in a front row he was "privileged" to play behind, throwing up Josh Perry as another contender. "I don't think they could do too much more than they have," he said.

It seemed a universal view in the Manly dressing-room.

Steve Menzies suggested everyone else was merely slow in noticing Kite's consistent form, appreciated by his teammates all season. "Playing for Australia, we didn't think he did too much wrong. We felt he's been playing the same way the whole time," he said.

Kite's winner was his simplest contribution: all he had to do was collect Menzies' inside pass on 76 minutes and place the ball down as the Warriors defence finally succumbed under the weight of their own errors. It was a marginally softer try than Matt Ballin's dummy-half effort four minutes earlier which gave the visitors the lead.

Manly coach Des Hasler seemed to think it could have all been a bit easier. Hasler took carefully-phrased aim at referee Tony De Las Heras and the video official, Graeme West. He'd counted four tries disallowed [two by West] and an instance of De Las Heras's losing the tackle count. "They do a referee review, and I would say I think they will be doing a very long referee review on that performance," Hasler said.

West's contentious decisions were that winger Michael Robertson brushed the corner flag just before touching down in the 37th minute, and that when Steve Matai scooped up a kick spilled by Warriors centre Jerome Ropati and sent in Brett Stewart, he had knocked on.

The Warriors, having led 14-10, allowed the Sea Eagles back into the game when, Orford admitted, all they needed to do was hold the ball.

Instead, after tries by Simon Mannering (52 min) and Aidan Kirk (66), fullback Lance Hohaia dropped both kick-offs. Asked if he were angry or frustrated, home coach Ivan Cleary settled for "both". His ire at individual mishaps is growing, and, while he still refrained from picking out contenders, the egregious error rates of Hohaia and Ropati were noticeable.

After torrential rain all morning, the Warriors had slashed covered seat ticket prices from $50 to $20 less than four hours before kick-off, but still couldn't tempt more than 8000 fans to turn up. The weather held in the first half, which closed at just 6-4 in the Warriors' favour, but the skies darkened dramatically on the hour and the game also lost any brightness it might have had as the home side panicked. "We beat ourselves," five-eighth Michael Witt said.

The Warriors are clearly in flux. They responded angrily last week to suggestions they are shopping Witt and halfback Grant Rovelli for an early release but, after signing Brisbane five-eighth Joel Moon on Saturday, they are known to still want a No.7. Rovelli was dropped yesterday, while Witt returned from injury.