Tonight the Aotearoa Warriors women's team take on Brisbane Broncos, the undefeated Brisbane Broncos in a game that isn't quite must-win but damn close to it. The Broncos have won their games thus far and have looked fantastic in the process, while the Warriors were impressive in their first up win over the Roosters but then got served a reality check by the Dragons last weekend.

With the Broncos on 4 point, followed by the Warriors and Dragons on 2 points each, the Warriors sit in 2nd spot via points differential. If they lose to the Broncos, they could still qualify for the Grand Final but that will require them to lose by a small margin and hope that the Roosters can beat the Dragons, without going large on the scoreboard. A Dragons win and a Warriors loss would see the Dragons move up to 2nd and the Warriors finish with one win, two losses.

Gauging how the Warriors go about their work on the field has been a tricky task for a couple of reasons. They came out the gate to beat the Roosters in a fairly strong performance before being blown away in the opening stanza of the Dragons game. Two games that felt like two extremes and as we've only got three games in the NRLW competition, we may not see the Warriors settle into what they'd consider their best work.

The trend from the first two weeks has been the changes in team selection, which continues into this round 3 game vs Broncos. This started in the first game when Annetta Nuuausala left the field injured and hasn't been sighted since, 15 minutes into the first ever women's NRL competition. Nuuausala started in the middle and her class was evident in those 15 minutes, not just because of her defence that caught everyone's attention; Nuuausala had 5runs/44m, 3 tackle bust and an offload in just 15 minutes.

Crystal Tamarua was not just brought into the team, but slotted straight into the starting line up to replace Nuuausala last week and played 31 minutes. In those 31 minutes, Tamarua didn't quite have the same efficiency as Nuuausala with 9runs/67m and 1 tackle busts. Tamarua was initially named to start again this week, but as has been the case leading up to the game, there was an almighty reshuffle of the team named and this reflects an 'all over the show' type of vibe from the first two weeks.

Sarina Clark again moves from the bench to start at centre, with Onjeurlina Leiataua again moving from centre to edge forward. Leiataua has consistently been initially named at centre and then played edge forward which is a bit weird - why not just name her as edge forward all the time? - especially as Leiataua earned Team of the Week selection in round 1. Clark was also the only Warriors player to crack Team of the Week in round 2, from centre.

Replacing Tamarua at starting prop is Tanika-Jazz Noble, who was initially named on an edge; Noble goes from edge to middle, Leiataua from centre to edge and Clark bench to centre. Noble has only played the Roosters game so far and got through 45mins, replacing Nuuausala and this could give the Warriors their best tarting middle forward group sans Nuuausala as Luisa Gago is back starting at lock. Gago started at lock vs Roosters, then came off the bench after the Dragons had already snatched the game away from the Warriors.

All of this has resulted in three players who didn't make the top-17 named on Tuesday, coming on to the bench. Lorina Papali'i has been a consistent presence on the bench and she is now joined by Masuisuimatamaalii Tauaua-Pauaraise, Raquel Anderson-Pitman and Va'anesa Molia-Fraser. Tauaua-Pauraisa has played both games of the bench and Anderson-Pitman came off the bench vs Dragons, while Molia-Fraser will make her first appearance.

This started out as me trying to highlight the immense changes between the teams named for the three games and as I dug deeper and came across the updated team list today, it's gone nek level with the amount of changes made. The spine has remained consistent with Apii Nicholls, Laura Mariu, Georgia Hale and Krystal Rota playing in the first two games and named again for this game vs Broncos, so that consistency is nice.

For context, the Broncos team list is unchanged from Tuesday and there has been minimal changes from week to week. We have to assume that Warriors coach Luisa Avaiki makes her plays know to the players earlier than it appears and that there is clarity around their roles, as it would be rather annoying to have so much uncertainty in team selection otherwise.

The importance of this goes up as the Warriors come into a game they need to win and it feels as though Avaiki doesn't know how her best team looks. This is a teeny weeny competition, only four weeks and we've already seen how the lack of warm up games impacted the Roosters and Dragons, so it's not surprising that Avaiki doesn't seem to know what her best 17 looks like. The Broncos do though and such changes, late in the week doesn't resemble a recipe for success against the only undefeated team.

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Peace and love 27.