Dolphins coach Kristian Woolf has encouraged his side to enjoy the opportunity they have earned after a brave qualifying final win against the Warriors in Auckland on Saturday night.
Woolf, speaking after the 26-16 victory, paid tribute to the playing group for standing up to "a lot of things going against us" in a tense encounter, which highlighted the resilience he had seen building in recent weeks
"I'm extremely proud. I thought our effort tonight was outstanding. You lose your starting prop in the first 10 minutes, I think they had double the six agains and penalty count, 10 points scored through penalty goals - we had a lot of things going against us there but our bravery and the way we wanted to defend our line, we just needed to give ourselves a bit of an opportunity with the ball in the second half," he said.
"It's obviously massive for everyone involved at the club and the club's done such a good job over four years - that's every department - to put us in a good position, but the blokes who deserve the credit are the players.
"The way they played tonight, as I said, the bravery they showed under pressure, they've done that so many times at the back end of the season and probably haven't had the credit they've deserved at different times, but they're in this position for a reason and that's because they want to work hard and work hard for each other."
Dolphins halfback Isaiya Katoa hailed his coach as "one of the biggest influences in the way we play our footy" and for the confidence he instilled across group leading into this game, as he had done all year.
"For us this week we just knew that one, our preparation needed to be right up there, but two, we didn't need to change anything in terms of preparation just because it's a finals game."
Katoa said he was proud of the way the group came out of the other side of the first half firestorm involving several scuffles as tensions ran high, resulting in Selwyn Cobbo spending 10 minutes in the sin bin, while the Warriors were briefly down to 11 men.
Chaos at Go Media Stadium
"I think one thing for us is we took a lot of lessons out of last year and one of the biggest ones was I can remember back to a Roosters game (a 64-12 loss in Round 23, 2025) where there was a little bit of that as well at the start of the game and one thing we took out of that game was we just never were able to go back and play our footy and get our footy back on.
"My messaging whilst that stuff was happening (tonight) was obviously just making sure that we stayed nice and calm," he said.
"Winning a fight or winning a push and shove on the field is not going to win the result at the end of the game.
"For us we needed to make sure that we get back on to playing our footy and just keep it nice, I guess, controlled aggression."
The Dolphins did not come out the game unscathed, with Thomas Flegler the primary concern after leaving the game early with concussion, having shown Category 1 symptoms after a collision with Mitch Barnett.
The club may also have a nervous wait on key players at the match review committee, with Max Plath and Connelly Lemuelu cited for dangerous contact and Isaiya Katoa on report for a dangerous tackle.
