Warriors fans have been waiting a long time to see their team play a home finals match. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Opinion - Fifteen years is a long time in sports, but that's how long it's been since the Warriors can say they've hosted a home finals match.
Even then, it was gained by only the barest of margins, which makes this season's effort by Andrew Webster's side that much more impressive.
Saturday night's fixture against the Newcastle Knights has been locked in for weeks now, with a sell-out crowd set to jam into Go Media Mt Smart Stadium for the showdown.
Back in 2008, the Warriors faced off against the Sydney Roosters at Mt Smart for a place in the following week's semi-final. For even the most die-hard fans, it was a shock - they'd only just scraped into the playoffs in eighth place and seemed doomed to fall at the first hurdle as they had to travel to Melbourne to face the minor premiership-winning Storm.
What happened that afternoon at Olympic Park has gone down as one of the most famous games in Warriors history. The team contained some of the most legendary names to ever pull on one of the endless variations of a Warriors jersey: Steve Price, Ruben Wiki, Simon Mannering, Lance Hohaia and Manu Vatuvei ... as well as a few that would make good answers to pub trivia sports round questions: Aidan Kirk, Ian Henderson and Grant Rovelli.
The Warriors won 18-15 in dramatic fashion, thanks to a Michael Witt try that went 80 metres down the field, literally seconds after commentator Peter Sterling claimed "there's nothing left in the Warriors".
Jerome Ropati got an offload away to Vatuvei, who created enough space for Witt to run away and give everyone a heart attack by showboating before putting the ball down.
That set up a mad scramble for tickets on the Monday, as Warriors fans travelled from across the country to fill Mt Smart.
There was a sense of unfinished business against the Roosters - who had defeated the Warriors in the 2002 Grand Final - and the visitors were no mugs, having finished fourth in the regular season. They had the likes of Origin reps Anthony Minichiello, Craig Fitzgibbon, Braith Anasta and Nate Myles, and were coached by the legendary Brad Fittler.
As usual, the Australian media wrote the Warriors off, and it looked to be a fair assessment when the scoreline read 13-6 to the Roosters at half-time. But whatever coach Ivan Cleary said during the break worked, with four second-half tries and effective defence paving the way for a surprisingly comfortable 30-13 win.
The game is remembered for one particular moment, although one of the players involved certainly doesn't have any recollection of it. After Vatuvei's try stretched the lead out to 24-13, a deep kick-off found Wiki (at the time the oldest player in the NRL at 35) steaming hard off the back fence, straight into Iosia Soliola. Wiki's shoulder knocked Soliola out cold and sent him flying backwards, prompting commentator Andrew Voss to declare: "He's ended up somewhere in the Cook Islands."
While it was a shame for Soliola, who is one of the game's genuine nice guys, the shot kick-started a massive belief that 2008 was finally going to be the Warriors' year.
Sadly, it was not to be. The Warriors were trounced by Manly the following weekend 32-6, with the scant consolation being that the Sea Eagles went on to flog the salary cap-cheating Storm 40-0 in the grand final after that.
Currently Warriors home finals are about the rarest sighting in New Zealand sports - even more so than cricket tests against Australia or Olympic gold medals that don't involve sitting down. But no matter what happens tomorrow night, Webster's regime so far seems to suggest that might be about to change.
