Watene-Zelezniak third Warrior to join NRL's 100-try club

One New Zealand Warriors winger Dallin Watene-Zelezniak has become the third Warrior and sixth New Zealander to score 100 NRL tries.

The 83rd player in history to hit a century, he joined the ranks of the competition’s try-scoring legends with his second four pointer against Cronulla Sutherland on Saturday night before icing a hat trick with the match-winner off Shaun Johnson’s sublime last pass of his career.

On a night when the focus was firmly fixed on Johnson in his farewell match before retiring, Watene-Zelezniak knocked off not only the 100 tries career milestone but also reached the 50-try mark for the One New Zealand Warriors.

He went into the match sitting on 49 tries for the club and 98 for his career.

The 50 arrived eight minutes into the second half as the Warriors began their recovery from a 4-22 halftime deficit, hooker Wayde Egan, the magical Johnson and fullback Taine Tuaupiki combining to open a passage for a DWZ special in the right-hand corner.

Just five minutes later the 100 was up. From a sweetly-worked fourth tackle play, centre Ali Leiataua swept the ball from dummy half to standoff Luke Metcalf, feeding Johnson who bit into the line and punched through a superbly-weighted, angled grubber for Watene-Zelezniak to race after to touch down well ahead of his Sharks opposite Sam Stonestreet and fullback William Kennedy.

And then in the dying seconds came the now-legendary winning try.

Watene-Zelezniak was the second player on Saturday to reach the 100-try mark with Maiko Sivo doing so earlier when he also scored a hat-trick in Parramatta’s shock win over St George Illawarra.

The former Kiwi captain’s treble took his tally to 101 tries from 212 appearances as he joined the 100 club with fellow New Zealanders Manu Vatuvei (152 tries in 226 matches), Nigel Vagana (140 tries in 240 matches), Shaun Kenny-Dowall (139 tries in 277 matches), Jordan Rapana (111 in 219 matches) and Jason Nightingale (110 in 266 matches).

Watene-Zelezniak’s 50 tries for the Warriors came in just 69 games, the fastest in the club’s history topping David Fusitu’a who took 77 matches to reach 50.

After scoring 49 tries in 143 games with Penrith and Canterbury Bankstown, Watene-Zelezniak’s first try in his fourth appearance for the Warriors in 2021 brought up his career 50.

After signing midway through the season, he scored four tries in nine appearances that year followed by nine in 18 games in 2022 - when he was the team’s top try scorer - and a club record for a season with 24 in 20 games last year. He followed that with 15 in 22 games this campaign.