The Warriors are adamant North Queensland’s team sheet will have no bearing on their mindset on Sunday as they try to build some momentum into an NRL campaign that has blown hot and cold.
The Cowboys will have four players missing to representative duty, making them the most State of Origin-depleted side the Warriors have faced this year.
Johnathan Thurston, Matt Scott and former Warrior Brent Tate will be in camp with Queensland ahead of next Wednesday’s Origin decider, while James Tamou will be away with the NSW squad.
But lock Micheal Luck says the absentees won’t alter the way the Warriors prepare against his former club, who have won five of their past seven matches.
“You can fall into the trap of worrying about who’s not there,” he said.
“You look at their team and see who they’ve got, and they’ve still got some bloody good players.”
It will be Luck’s first outing at Auckland’s Mt Smart Stadium this season after the long rehabilitation from shoulder, wrist and finger injuries.
His first appearance of the year, and his 145th for the Warriors in a 221-game career, came in the 20-19 defeat away to Cronulla before last weekend’s bye.
It resulted in his limping off with a knee problem that he said had come right.
With a 6-8 win-loss record, the Warriors are still looking for traction.
They’ve lost three of their past four fixtures, leaving them ninth on the table before the latest round, four points and four places below the Cowboys.
But Luck’s seven seasons in Auckland have given him plenty of experience of late runs by the club.
They include 2011, when the Warriors won seven of their last nine round-robin matches to end the regular season in sixth spot, before going on to make the grand final.
So Luck, who hangs up his boots at the end of the year, remains confident that he can sign off with another foray into the playoffs.
“We’ve still got 10 games, so there’s still a long way to go,” he said.
“We were in a pretty similar position last year. We’ve just got to put some results back to back.”
The Warriors welcome back 80-minute hooker Nathan Friend, who was out for almost two months with a broken jaw.
But one of their major strike weapons, winger Manu Vatuvei, remains sidelined by a knee injury.
