Simon Mannering will celebrate twin milestones when he leads the Warriors out against Newcastle in Auckland on Sunday, but he doesn’t want personal achievement to overshadow team objective.
Mannering will clock up 200 NRL appearances, and 100 as skipper, as the Warriors look to continue their momentum under new coach Andrew McFadden.
“It’s a huge honour but you probably won’t have too many fond memories of it if we don’t perform well and get a win,” the 27-year-old said.
“The main focus is on that and we’ll think about the other stuff afterwards.”
The Warriors are backing up from a 24-16 away win over Gold Coast which put them 12th on the ladder, just two points outside the eight.
Since McFadden took over, he has stiffened their defence and, while their record over that period is 3-3, the defeats have all been close, two within four points.
One area where Mannering believes they need more polish is their execution in attack.
“You never want to go into your shell, but if you make a mistake, you definitely don’t want to back it up, which we probably have,” he said.
“The effort’s there, the scramble’s there. So get the execution right and hopefully that will set us up for the rest of the season.”
Apart from Mannering’s landmarks, the match will be the first of the season for the Warriors at Mt Smart Stadium.
It also comes after a week in which long-time servant Jerome Ropati announced his retirement after battling a series of injuries in recent seasons.
McFadden hopes the Warriors can give both Mannering and Ropati a big performance in their return to their traditional home.
But he is also wary of the players’ focus being distracted by the different storylines.
“All those are diversions and we need to put that out of our minds,” he said.
“You have a look across their team and they’re high quality. They haven’t had a lot of luck this year, so we’re expecting them to be fired up.”
The Knights are second bottom after a run of four losses, but they ran Manly close before their bye last weekend.
It took a field goal from halfback Daly Cherry-Evans with seconds to go to get the Sea Eagles home 15-14 at Brookvale Oval.
The clash with the Warriors will be the first for Newcastle since Nathan Tinkler announced he was relinquishing ownership of the club.
They have Darius Boyd and Beau Scott backing up from State of Origin and welcome back Kiwi enforcer Jeremy Smith from a knee injury.
