Warriors fans in Brisbane a ‘wild swirling outpouring of energy’ for NRL Magic Round

Source: Radio New Zealand

First Person – You could feel something special building for days, even before the NZ Warriors took the field.

On Air New Zealand planes to Brisbane, the cabins were filled with blue and green jerseys. Pilots and cabin crews dispensed “Up the Wahs”. In this city, Warriors jerseys were omnipresent.

On Friday, a line snaked down the shopping precinct on Queen Street as fans lined up to buy merch from the Warriors pop-up store – and meet former halfback Shaun Johnson.

New Zealanders like Brisbane; there are more of us there than in Dunedin, but this was high visibility Kiwidom. It felt like every local train had someone wearing a Warriors cap with its distinctive Tiki; every cafe had someone in a Warriors jersey, every sports bar a knot of Warriors fans.

On the opening night of the NRL Magic Round, it felt as if there were more Warriors supporters in the stands than fans of any of the other teams playing.

One estimate put the Kiwi contingent at more than 8000 in a stadium whose capacity is a little over 50,000, one of the biggest and certainly the most visible of the travelling groups of fans of the 16 teams playing.

An hour and a half before Sunday’s kick-off, Caxton Street leading down to Suncorp Stadium was packed. Police had already closed the roads with barricades.

Word had gone out that Warriors fans would meet at the Lord Alfred hotel, a watering hole both legendary and apparently historically significant for its Victorian pub architecture, to march – or hikoi as the fan organisers said – to the ground en masse. By 2.45pm, there were so many people outside the Lord Alfred, it took time for the leaders and drummer to get to the front and set everyone off. Slowly.

Then with flags flying, drums beating, the crowd of green and blue set off, chanting, to the stadium, past the gawking pubs and bars, past the watching police and security staff, the merch tents, and sponsors’ sideshows, into the ground.

There we congregated mostly in the northern stand, Kiwi territory, it was a mass of voluble partisan fans, The facing southern stand was more disputed, a stalemate of barrages from Warriors and Broncos fans.

Magic Round-goers are a festive bunch. The fans of 15 out of 16 teams travelled from around Australia for a good weekend; Warriors fans travelled from overseas and were there to make the most of every second.

The noise level on Sunday was staggering. It was enough to trigger warnings on iPhones. We were a long way from the image of New Zealanders as reserved, the “passionless people” of 1970s thinking.

This was the loudest game of Magic Round by a long way; when it was over and the Panthers played the Dragons in one last, ultimately dreary encounter, it sounded like a poorly attended Super rugby match at Eden Park – near silent. But for this game, fans sang, chanted, cheered ever Warrior move, jeering their opponents with gusto, toasting plays, bantering with neighbours, riding every tackle, every shift in the match.

“Ooh, aah, up the Wahs”, the stands chanted.

This was a crowd, working together and determined to tell their players they were there. A wall of noise for the Broncos, a wall of electricity for the Warriors. The body language of players suggested they were aware.

In defence, the Warriors were ferocious. In attack, they were unforgiving.

The Broncos were simply swept away.

This was no longer their Suncorp, their Lang Park.

At half-time the stadium played Poi E. Then the Warriors crowd sang Tūtira Mai Ngā Iwi.

There may have been a few moments in the second half when the Broncos struck back, and their own partisan supporters matched the Warriors’ supporters for intensity, but it didn’t last. The Warriors were disciplined, the crowd vociferous.

Ten minutes from the final whistle, the crowd were lifting the roof off the stand as time ran out for the Broncos.

“Oh, oh, we’re halfway there”; they sang.

“Oh oh, living on a prayer…”

With four minutes left, the crowd were on their feet.

“Hey, hey ya baby, Ooh, aah, I want to know, will you be my girl?”

When it was all over, the Warriors team remained on the field. They hadn’t won at Suncorp against the Broncos since 2018. Now they had claimed it and it was theirs by right.

As a final act, they came together and stood before the northern stand to acknowledge their crowd. The crowd surged forward like waves of the sea. Then it was the turn of hip hop artist Savage to perform for the fans, his Warrior Nation.

“Get up and shout, say it till the end, we are the Warriors 100%.”

The crowd of green and blue exulted.

Double try-scorer Dallin Watene-Zelezniak thanked the crowd: “There were so many fans here, it felt like Auckland”.

Tomorrow, there will be questions. There will be the routine worries of injuries and suspensions and next games to play, all the ongoing huff and puff of sport. There’ll also be time for the nagging question that always dogs the Warriors – can they actually win this thing?

But at that moment, in that place, there was only a wild swirling outpouring of energy and noise and purpose. A cacophony of joy and a shout of resolve.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/18/warriors-fans-in-brisbane-a-wild-swirling-outpouring-of-energy-for-nrl-magic-round/