Up or down – which way will Warriors move?

Nathan Brown says the Warriors are entering a pivotal stage of the season.

Over the next period, before State of Origin begins, it will be the time where the Warriors will either make a charge back into the eight or be one of those teams hovering around the fringes of the playoff spots.

Despite losing four of their last five games, the Warriors are only two points behind the eighthplaced Rabbitohs on the ladder.

If they can pick up wins over the Dragons, Knights and Sea Eagles over the next three weeks, they’ll be back in finals contentions. If they lose all of them, this shapes as being a campaign where they’ll end up somewhere between 10th and 14th on the ladder.

‘‘We’re one win out of the eight and there are a fair chunk of sides around eight and 10 points,’’ Brown said.

‘‘There are some that will get consistency, growth in their game and push forward on the ladder and there are some that you’ll look at in three or four weeks’ time and they’ll be in a similar spot.

‘‘The challenge for us is to be one of the sides that pushes forward so that when we do get to go back to New Zealand, we go back with momentum or a good position on the ladder.

‘‘That’s the challenge for us over the next four to five weeks, because we certainly want to go home and the fans turn up to watch a team that’s playing some consistent footy.’’

While the Warriors mounted a spirited but ultimately failed comeback against the Rabbitohs last weekend, Brown hasn’t been happy with the way the team has been playing lately.

‘‘In the last three weeks of footy, we’ve been disappointed – we felt we were making some decent progress before then,’’ Brown said.

‘‘The big key for us is trying to get some consistency across the board and try to get two halves of footy together.

‘‘Whilst we’ve won a few games this year, I still don’t think we’ve nailed two good halves of footy.

‘‘We’ve had one good half or a couple of good periods, but that’s the big challenge for us at the moment.’’

The Warriors and Dragons last met in the first game of this season, with the Dragons winning 28-16.

In that game Mikaele Ravalawa scored a hattrick for the Dragons, destroying the Warriors’ left edge defence. The edges were shaky in the first half against the Rabbitohs last week too, but Brown is confident they’ll be up to the challenge on Saturday.

‘‘That was the first game of the year and to be fair to the left edge, it was a bad start but they knuckled down and got some consistency,’’ he said.

‘‘We lost Marcelo [Montoya] through suspension and Chanel [Harris-Tavita] with injury, so we’ve had a few changes there.

‘‘Marcelo is one of our good, experienced players and one of our leaders and I’d be confident that we’ll handle him [Ravalawa] well.

‘‘Obviously, one of the key things is not letting him have too much room. So it’s a team effort there and if the people on the inside can help a little, it will help our edges get to him quicker.’’

Harris-Tavita has been named on the extended bench and although he’s back training with the team, he’ll need to get clearance from a specialist before Brown will know if he can use him.

Brown is also looking to get more minutes from Tohu Harris this weekend, in his first game back in over nine months last weekend the team’s captain played for 29 minutes.

‘‘The more minutes Tohu plays, the better we’ll be,’’ he said.

‘‘It was quite clear that when he was out on the field the other day it was our best period of footy.

‘‘He’s going to start this week, so he’ll play more this time for sure.’’