Luck to lead Warriors against Dragons

by NRL

Micheal Luck will lead the Warriors in his first starting appearance of the NRL season when they face St George Illawarra at WIN Stadium in Wollongong tomorrow night (5.30pm kick-off local time).

Luck (30) will be playing his 149th game for the club - his 225th career appearance - but it will be just his fifth NRL outing this season.

In his first NRL outing in charge interim Vodafone Warriors coach Tony Iro said Luck would take over from Manu Vatuvei, who has filled the role since captain Simon Mannering was ruled out with an ankle injury. Added to that, Mannering's usual stand-in Luck was out and returned only two weeks ago in an interchange capacity.

"The big difference is that Lucky is now up to speed and starting for us so he'll lead the side," he said.

"Manu came in to do the job at a really difficult time for us but he's more than happy for Lucky to take over now."

After several operations and issues with shoulder and wrist injuries, Luck wasn't able to make his first appearance of the season until the 15th-round match against Cronulla. He played 23 minutes off the bench in that match and 25 minutes two weeks later against North Queensland before being side-lined again by his shoulder complaint.

He worked his way back but wanted to test himself by first playing for the Auckland Vulcans in the New South Wales Cup before being considered for NRL duty again.

After an 80-minute outing against Wenworthville his first game back for the Vodafone Warriors was the 12-52 loss to North Queensland when he played 41 minutes off the bench, making 20 tackles. He stepped up the workload with a 58-minute effort from the interchange in last Sunday's 16-18 defeat by the Penrith Panthers, highlighted by 35 tackles.

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