Dragons vs Warriors

Dragons

Nada.

Warriors

Madison Bartlett, Crystal Tamarua, Hilda Peters, Georgia Hale, Kanyon Paul.

Doc's Word

Hilda Peters started on the wing, then played edge forward and now she is named to start at hooker in place of Kanyon Paul. Bartlett is back on the wing for this game, against the Dragons who have also lost their first two games. As far as Warriors stats go, they (and the Dragons) have 4 linebreaks while the Roosters and Broncos have 14 linebreaks, the Warriors are also 4th in tackle busts for the four NRLW teams and the Warriors are also 4th in Post Contact Metres; Warriors have 596pcm, Roosters lead the competition with 850pcm.

Roosters vs Broncos

Roosters

Nita Maynard.

Broncos

Raecene McGregor.

Doc's Word

Amber Hall and Lavinia Gould are out injured, with Hall leading all players for PCM as the only player who has 100+ PCM from the first two games. That leaves Nita Maynard at hooker for the Roosters and Raecene McGregor in the halves for Broncos.

Storm vs Raiders

Storm

Jahrome Hughes, Jesse Bromwich, Kenny Bromwich, Nelson Asofa-Solomona, Brandon Smith.

Raiders

Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad, Jordan Rapana, Iosia Soliola, Joseph Tapine, Siliva Havili, Corey Harawira-Naera, Matthew Timoko.

Doc's Word

Matthew Timoko is named on an extended bench for Canberra Raiders and is highly unlikely to play, leaving the Kiwi-NRL numbers for this game as six for the Raiders and five for the Storm; that's 11 players who are named to play in this game who played junior footy in Aotearoa. Last week's Monday Morning Dummy Half put a focus on Nelson Asofa-Solomona, Joseph Tapine and James Fisher-Harris, then this week's MMDH zoned in on Tapine and the Raiders - check those out for more details.

The battle between, or how Brandon Smith and Siliva Havili are deployed by their respective coaches will be low key interesting as I've followed their 2020 seasons closely. Smith has primarily been used as a middle forward and is coming off the win over Parramatta Eels in the opening round of finals footy in which Smith had 14 runs for 152m @ 10.85m/run. That's as good an effort as any middle forward in the competition and resembles the Joseph Tapine stats from the first two finals games.

Havili on the other hand has consistently switched roles between hooker and middle forward. Tom Starling is again named to start at hooker, although Havili might make a late move to take the field as a starting hooker and if he doesn't, then the Raiders will have the mobility of Havili, Hudson Young and Corey Harawira-Naera to back up their starting middle forwards.

The Raiders have a forward pack that is nicely designed to trouble the Storm, leaving me eager to see how Jesse Bromwich performs and thus gauge where Bromwich is at with NRL footy in 2020. Bromwich wasn't asked to do too much with the footy vs Eels as he had 11 runs for 88m in 55mins and that's genuinely all good when the Storm can roll down the field easily any way, then Bromwich is also making 24 tackles @ 92.3 percent efficiency. Bromwich does his role perfectly for the Storm and that's always the best way to judge a player, I'm also wondering if the Manurewa Marlins junior has a sneaky nek level as fars as running the footy goes; could we see the 14 runs for 140m type of game that Bromwich has a habit of producing when it matters?

Panthers vs Rabbitohs

Panthers

James Fisher-Harris, Zane Tetevano, Dean Whare.

Rabbitohs

Jaxson Paulo, Steven Marsters.

Doc's Word

Everything is fairly settled here, although Jaxson Paulo rolled out an impressive performance last week in the Rabbitohs win over Eels and the Northcote Tigers junior has steamed his way to 12 games since making his debut - two of which have been knockout finals games. Paulo scored 2 tries with 3 linebreaks and a couple long-range efforts bumped up his running stats, giving Paulo 4 tries, 3 try assists, 8 linebreaks and 17 tackle busts in his first 12 games of NRL footy. Paulo is likely to line up against Josh Mansour on the wing, which will be a nice challenge for Paulo as he'll have to deal with the Panthers left edge where Jarome Luai does the play-making and where Stephen Crichton is a freak at centre.

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Peace and love