The NRL Pre-Season Challenge started with a terrific hit-up between Cronulla and New Zealand, two of the teams that will be travelling to Las Vegas to commence the regular season. Last year the Sharkies made it all the way to the Preliminary Final, where they were downed by the Panthers, while the Warriors had a more mixed season, only notching up nine wins and performing particularly poorly at home. This evening they’d come away with a 12-12 deadlock, golden point not being a feature of the Witzer pre-season tournament.

While there were some key omissions for both sides – Roger Tuivasa-Sheck was a late exit following a wrist injury during training – the Sharks, in particular, were fielding a predominantly younger team. New recruit Addin Fonua-Blake wasn’t appearing and Nicho Hynes, Cam McInnes and Jesse Ramien were all held back, giving the young guns room to breathe, with Taj Ford showing some potential off an extended bench that saw a whopping 55 players named by both sides, 28 for the Wahs and 27 for the hosts.

On the other side of the Steeden, star Warriors recruit James Fisher-Harris was named in the starting side (although 2024 Simon Mannering Medal recipient Mitch Barnett remains at captain) and Jett Cleary came on during the final quarter, contributing a couple of impressive plays in his short stint on the park. With Shaun Johnson’s vision missing, the game was a test run for Luke Metcalf and Te Maire Martin, who will need to build a solid, stable and supple relationship in the halves if New Zealand are going to make a bid for the eight in 2025.

The score had been tight last time Cronulla played the Warriors, in Round 26 last year – a 28-30 point win for New Zealand – and it would turn out to be even more matched this evening. At first, it looked like the Sharkies might dominate, thanks to the elegance and ease of their first try, which came on the back of an error from Edward Kosi, who momentarily took his eyes off the high ball at the third minute in order to plan his return, and coughed the footy up in the process, gifting Cronulla the first scrum of the night, from the opposition red zone.

They followed with a restless sequence of attacking options, as starting hooker Jayden Berrell popped it out to Sione Katoa, who had a few rusty moments this evening, and didn’t manage to nail the offload back to Mawene Hiroti. Nevertheless they won another set in the ten from Kurt Capewell, and then another from Wayde Egan, when Siosifa Talakai explosively shifted the direction of the attack with a diagonal run back inside. With all that disintegration of the Warriors line it felt almost inevitable when Tom Hazelton crossed beside the left post.

It was a stirring start to the year for the Cronulla prop, who’d scored an impressive seven tries in 25 games last season, the last against the Warriors in Round 26. The visitors hit back at the close of the first quarter, when Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad crossed over on the right edge, at the end of a sequence that testified to how brilliantly Dylan Walker has evolved into a ball-playing forward. It started just after Walker had joined the park, and he disheveled the Sharkies’ defence in the red zone by heading right, turning around and passing it to Hohepa Puru.

It was like watching the veteran lock usher in the young guard now, as Puru withstood an enormous hit from Braden Hamlin-Uele to offload back to Egan, who popped it on for Walker to bookend the sequence he’d set up with a beautiful bullet ball out to the wing, where Charnze easily won the battle of the fullbacks to topple Will Kennedy and plant it over the chalk. Walker had been just slipping to ground when he received the Steeden on the assist but still managed to parlay his downward motion into the precise angle his custodian needed.

So far both teams had glimpsed some of the brilliance that their 2025 season might hold. Still, this was basically a trial game and a bit of messiness was bound to break through the surface. Half an hour in Metcalf nailed the first 40/20 of the season but the next error came from Taine Tuaupiki. Five minutes later the Sharkies had their most sinuous right sweep so far, with Katoa booting it back inside at speed. Atkinson and Chris Vea’ila converged on it without Cronulla player in sight, but some last minute communication meant neither got it before it went dead.

Seeing such an easy try go begging, especially on the back of such a brilliant buildup, introduced a new decisiveness to the match, and it peaked twelve minutes into the back forty, when Charnze coughed up the footy, Michael Gabrael scooped it up only to lose it in turn,and Martin transmuted that chaos into precision with a burst down the middle that echoed Johnson’s linebreak and assist for Metcalf in the opening minutes of the Round 26 game. No wonder that it produced both the most efficient and the most dexterous try of the evening.

All it took was one more right sweep to produce a perfect halfback-fullback synergy – Metcalf driving it deep into the line for Charnze to balletically tap it on to Tuaupiki, who found himself bunched into the wing and so pivoted off the right boot to diagonally snake past three Cronulla defenders for the second New Zealand try of the night. Metcalf made it 2/2 with the kicks, the Wahs were six ahead once more, ten minutes later Cleary was on the park, and at the 26^th minute Daeon Amituanai delivered the bone-rattler of the match on Vea’lia.

Nevertheless the Sharks rallied five from the siren, when Gabrael made up for his ball drop by charging at the line, coming down a few centimetres short, and playing it fast as possible so that Berrell could step into the late spotlight. Turning around one and a half times, assessing every possible option, he eventually grubbered it towards the posts, where Puru slammed it down, a lovely to the sequel to the strength and composure he’d demonstrated in the face of the Hamlin-Uele hitup that had given Walker and Kennedy room to shine.

Mawene Hiroti took over kicking duties from Atkinson for this last crucial conversion, driving it through the posts to bring the game to a 12-12 tie, the perfect gee up for both teams as they prepare for the rest of the pre-season stint and, more importantly, for their dual appearances in Vegas. The final scoreline was all the more impressive for Cronulla in that they were playing with a fairly junior team compared to New Zealand and had lost Katoa to a mild shoulder injury that luckily doesn’t seem acute enough to put his regular season at risk.

More of a downer was seeing Dallin Watene Zelezniak trot off ten minutes in, after appearing to injure his wrist when lobbing an offload back in from the wing, despite having a few conceivable paths to the try line – a dispiriting contrast to his hat trick of corner dives against the Sharkies back in Round 26. Hopefully he’ll be back soon enough. In the meantime, Metcalf proved how well he can steer this Wahs outfit around the park when he’s charged up, so all eyes in New Zealand will be on him to inherit Johnson’s mantle on the big stage in Nevada.