Stats the spirit: Running the Round 2 numbers 🏉📊
Early-season individual standouts and a historically good start means there's juicy Warriors stats bursting out of every orifice.
A start for the ages
Fit, disciplined Wahs get the jump on rivals
Ford leads Dally M, post-contact
Boyd leads pointscoring, try assists
Halasima chases tryscoring forward greats
Warriors look to continue record Knights dominance
On the back of a stunning first-up win over Sydney Roosters, the Warriors well and truly put the rest of the NRL on notice in Round 2 with a 40-6 smackdown of 2025 minor premier Canberra.
A tense first half in the wet – after the Warriors had lost Kurt Capewell in the warm-up and Chanel Harris-Tavita 10 minutes in to concussion – suggested a dogfight against a fired-up Raiders outfit in the second 40.
Instead, the Warriors ran in six unanswered tries to record the club’s equal-biggest win in the opening fortnight of a season.
Andrew Webster’s charges again dominated possession (55 percent), while they completed at 86 percent to the Raiders’ 78 percent in slippery conditions. It was another landslide result despite finishing on the wrong side of the line-break count (the Raiders’ had four to the Warriors’ three).
The Warriors had not scored 40-plus points in consecutive games at Mount Smart Stadium since 2007.
A start for the ages
The Warriors are one of just four 2-0 teams after two rounds, alongside Melbourne, Penrith and Newcastle (the two sides who have had the bye, Wests Tigers and Canterbury, are also unbeaten).
Incredibly, it’s only the fourth time in the Warriors’ 32-season history that they’ve won their first two games: they went 2-0 in 2007 and 2009, and won their first five games in 2018.
The Warriors have scored 82 points and accrued a plus-58 point differential. Their previous best in both departments for the opening two rounds were both achieved in 2007 – 58 points and plus-26, respectively.
Along with the Storm – who have won their two games 52-4 and 46-20 – and the 2021 Roosters, the Warriors are one of just three teams in the past decade to score 40 points or more in the opening two rounds.
Fit, disciplined Wahs get the jump on rivals
Looking super-fit and staying out of the referees’ crosshairs amid a set-restart crackdown, the Warriors have been hanging onto the ball and running the opposition off their feet to start 2026.
The Warriors are second in the NRL for possession (56 percent) and set completion (84 percent), while they are fourth in the comp for run metres (3,537) and lead the league in post-contact metres (1,280)
They are also second-best in the NRL for least errors per game (17) and have conceded the fourth-least penalties per game (3.5).
Pay it Ford
If Luke Metcalf was an unlikely Dally M Medal leader before being struck down by an ACL injury last year, Jackson Ford must rank among the all-time early-season bolters in the race for the code’s most prestigious individual honour.
For the second week in a row, the front-row workhorse scooped the maximum six Dally M votes to take a three-point lead at the top of the standings ahead of second-placed Penrith fullback Dylan Edwards.
Tanah Boyd received two votes from each of the two judges, while Taine Tuaupiki and James Fisher-Harris picked up a point each.
Ford leads the competition for post-contact metres (170) and is fifth overall for run metres (372), sitting just behind teammate Roger Tuivasa-Sheck (378) in the latter category.
WARRIORS DALLY M MEDAL LEADERBOARD 2026
12 – Jackson Ford (first overall)
5 – Tanah Boyd (equal-14th overall)
2 – Roger Tuivasa-Sheck
1 – Taine Tuaupiki, James Fisher-Harris
In a Tanah of speaking
While Ford has earned the affections of the Dally M judges – and few would begrudge him of the plaudits – back-up halfback Tanah Boyd has arguably been the standout individual storyline of both wins so far.
Boyd is first-equal in the competition with four try assists (alongside Cronulla’s Braydon Trindall) and has notched tries in consecutive games for just the second time in his 80-game NRL career. He also leads the NRL’s pointscoring race with 32 after two rounds.
The goalkicking No.7 has now scored 90 points in 11 top-grade appearances for the Warriors. Albeit from a small sample size, it’s a historically strong points per game strike-rate:
MOST POINTS PER GAME IN WARRIORS HISTORY
8.28 – Ivan Cleary (439 in 53 games)
8.18 – Tanah Boyd (90 in 11 games)
7.29 – James Maloney (547 in 75 games)
6.77 – Michael Witt (291 in 43 games)
6.43 – Matthew Ridge (238 in 37 games)
Ford and Boyd are the early co-leaders in the Kingz Container Crew Player of the Year standings after both earned 8.5 ratings in both victories to date.
Halasima chases tryscoring forward greats
Leka Halasima’s double against Canberra gave him the early lead in the Warriors’ 2026 tryscoring race, adding to the four-point he bagged in Round 1.
Halasima was the Warriors’ top tryscorer in 2025 with 13 – a club record for a forward. One of those was as a centre in the finals loss to Penrith, but the previous best mark was 10. Since going scoreless in his first seven NRL games he has now crossed 16 times in 24 games, a strike-rate that puts him in the elite category among the game’s forwards of any era.
Manly forward Steve Menzies is the greatest tryscoring forward of all time with 180 in 349 games; after 31 appearances he was only one try in front of Halasima. Glebe’s pioneering era icon Frank Burge scored an absurd 148 tries in just 153 games but only had 11 to his name after 31 outings.
The only other forward with a century of tries in the premiership, Bob McCarthy scored 119 times in 251 games for Souths and Canterbury in the 1960s and ’70s. He scored only six times in his first 31 games.
Of Halasima’s contemporaries, only North Queensland’s Jeremiah Nanai has a comparable strike-rate – scoring an impressive 46 tries in 84 games. Nanai scored 21 tries in his first 31 games.
The Warriors’ highest tryscoring forwards are Simon Mannering (47 tries, which exclude the 16 he scored as a centre starter) and Logan Swann (36).
Hard day’s Knight
Injuries to superstar duo Kalyn Ponga and Dylan Brown have taken the sting out of the Warriors’ Round 3 road trip to take on unbeaten Newcastle somewhat.
The Warriors are now warm favourites to continue a strong recent record against the Knights, winning four of the teams’ last five encounters. The Knights have not managed more than 15 points in their last five matches against the Warriors.
McDonald Jones Stadium has not been the happiest of hunting grounds for the Warriors, going 9-14 at the venue since 1995. Halasima’s unforgettable last-second match-winner late in 2025 snapped a four-match losing streak in Newcastle.
Number crunchers
No shortage of Warriors joining Jackson Ford in the stats stud department on Friday night:
· Ford’s contribution was headlined by 16 runs for 154 metres and a team-high 37 tackles.
· James Fisher-Harris was a powerhouse up front again with 18 runs for 151 metres and 35 tackles.
· Milestone man Roger Tuivasa-Sheck made a team-high 210 metres from 22 carries.
· Leka Halasima played the full 80 minutes after Capewell’s pre-game mishap and garnished his two-try performance with 14 runs for 117 metres and 35 tackles.
· Taine Tuauapiki played 70 minutes at fullback and racked up 207 metres from 22 runs.
· Erin Clark 12 runs for 114 metres and 24 tackles without a miss was reminiscent of last season’s stellar week-to-week efforts.
· Demitric Vaimauga and Tanner Stowers-Smith both pass the 100-metre mark off the bench.