Halfback Luke Metcalf and centre Rocco Berry made successful returns to the playing field in the One New Zealand Warriors’ round 13 New South Wales Cup encounter with competition leader Penrith on Sunday.
While the Warriors fell to a 20-30 loss in the away game, the pair came through the contest unscathed.
The 27-year-old Metcalf had his first outing since the round five NRL loss to Cronulla Sutherland on April 5 when he left the field five minutes from fulltime with a hamstring injury.
And Berry (25) was having his first game since suffering a shoulder injury five minutes into the Warriors’ final regular season match against Manly Warringah on September 5 last year.
It was a testing reintroduction for the duo as the Warriors slumped to a 0-18 deficit at halftime which then blew out to 0-30 nine minutes into the second half.
They then halted the flow of points, found some momentum and finished the match with four tries in the last 26 minutes.
Metcalf had key involvements in two of the tries, the first when he combined with fullback Joseph Ratcliffe to send winger Harry Tauafiafi over wide out on the right.
Match: Panthers v Warriors
Round 13 -
home Team
Panthers
1st Position
away Team
Warriors
9th Position
Venue: Parker Street Reserve, Penrith
He then threw a wonderful long pass to centre Jye Linnane for supporting second rower Bishop Neal to power over in the left-hand corner.
He finished with three line break assists, ran the ball 12 times for 52 metres, handled the ball 60 times and made 408 metres from 11 kicks.
Berry was used for 60 minutes as planned making 68 metres from eight runs as he eased his way back into action.
