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A Warriors team fishing trip transformed into a rescue mission yesterday, as team members assisted in saving a man floating off an Auckland beach.The Warriors, two weeks out from their NRL opener against the Newcastle Knights, were on a team-bonding trip when a Coastguard mission came on the radio around 4pm saying a "boy … got swept away in the water."Their charter was off Takapuna Beach on Auckland's North Shore at the time, and a police chopper and rescue boat were joining the search for a 20-year-old swimmer who had gone "well out beyond the swimming lane into a choppy channel" according to a police spokesperson."Immediately everyone dropped their rods," Johnson told the Herald, after the Coastguard call came through. "[The boat's crew] said, 'We've been asked to go help the search'. And we said, 'Yeah go, of course'."So we just all dropped our rods and headed in [to shore]. On this fishing charter boat there's two levels and we were all around the edge, everyone was looking in every direction."Winger Matt Allwood eventually spotted the missing man.
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"I saw a little black thing bobbing up and down way in the distance and I thought it was a buoy," he said. "I went over and told the boat's captain and we went in that direction, when [the man] came visible to us."He looked a bit buggered, he was tired. We yelled out and told him we were there and to keep swimming."The Warriors' charter boat radioed police and the players kept an eye on the missing man, before police arrived and lifted him out of the water."We were happy to see he was all right," Allwood added. "It was a good moment."