Warriors vs Roosters

Warriors

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

Roosters

Nita Maynard.

Doc's Word

Bit of a positional switch for the Warriors as Madison Bartlett and Hilda Peters swap their roles from last week with Bartlett moving to the wing and Peters moving to edge forward. Peters has primarily played on the wing through NRLW and it'll interesting to see what she offers as an edge forward.

Georga Hale continues to be a focal point for the Warriors in the middle, although not as a super robust running forward. Hale did have 6 runs for 53m @ 8.33m/run and that's rather efficient, plus she made 38 tackles @ 86.4 percent efficiency to go with 7 passes and this lays out Hale's value; high work rate and shifting the footy.

The Warriors had 56 percent possession vs Broncos, as well as a higher completion rate than their opponent and yet they lost 28-14 which stems from being steam-rolled. Broncos had 1,108 running metres and 319 Post Contact Metres while the Warriors had 826m and 249pcm from more footy, but same number of runs.

Dragons vs Broncos

Dragons

Nada.

Broncos

Raecene McGregor, Lavinia Gould, Amber Hall.

Doc's Word

That stuff about the Warriors being steam-rolled mainly came via Auckland's Amber Hall who had 12 rus for 129m @ 10.75m/run and 60pcm @ 5pcm/run. No other forward in the Broncos vs Warriors game had over 100m, making Hall's effort rather bonkers and Hall casually had 8 tackle busts and 3 offloads in her 48mins on the Broncos edge.

Roosters vs Raiders

Roosters

Joseph Manu, Jared Waerea-Hargreaves, Siosiua Taukeiaho, Isaac Liu, Sitili Tupouniua, Sonny Bill Williams.

Raiders

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

Doc's Word

While the top-end Roosters talent commands plenty of media attention, I'm zoning in on Otahuhu's Isaac Liu and Marist Saints junior Sitili Tupouniua for this knockout game of footy. The return of Sonny Bill Williams has somewhat overshadowed Liu's contributions in the middle for the Roosters and Liu's season can be split down the middle; eight games coming off the bench then 10 games starting in the middle.

Those 10 games starting have seen Liu play 40+ minutes in all 10, playing 50+ minutes in eight of these 10 games. That coincides with Liu averaging 108m per game and this is the first of Liu's eight seasons in the NRL in which he's averaging over 100m per game, leading us to what Liu served up in the narrow loss to the Panthers last week. Liu played 69 minutes with 15 runs for 126m @ 8.4m/run, 1 tackle bust, 1 offload and 44 tackles with 1 missed tackle @ 97.8 percent efficiency. In the most important game of their season to that point, Liu played the most minutes of the Roosters middle forwards, made the most tackles and was among their busiest running the footy.

The Raiders forward pack is super duper dynamic, full of footwork and power which makes this a rather intriguing match up for Liu and the likes of Jared Waerea-Hargreaves and Siosiua Taukeiaho. Tupouniua is likely to contribute in the middle as Boyd Cordner and Angus Crichton have been named to start on the edges with Tupouniua on the bench, sliding back to how Tupouniua started the season as he played seven games earlier in the year coming off the bench; the rest of Tupouniua's games were on the Roosters edge.

Tokoroa's Joseph Manu will also be a low key joker to keep an eye on as he missed 4 tackles vs Panthers, while also grabbing just 11 touches of the footy. In his 20 games this season, Manu has missed 4+ tackles in four games which puts into perspective how the Panthers attacked Manu and while Manu made 15 tackles with 4 misses, fellow centre Josh Morris made 12 tackles with no misses. Manu will line up against Jarrod Croker, although Jack Wighton's play-making work down the Raiders left edge will be the spark in movements to target Manu.

Manu's 11 touches vs Panthers was the lowest in his last 10 outings. If Manu has 15+ touches for the Chooks, good things will happen.

Eels vs Rabbitohs

Eels

Dylan Brown, Haze Dunster.

Rabbitohs

Jaxson Paulo, Steven Marsters.

Doc's Word

Enjoy the work of Rabbitohs winger Jaxson Paulo who hails from Auckland's North Shore and after making his debut in round 10, Paulo has played 11 games with 2 tries, 3 try assists and 5 linebreaks. Not too shabby in your opening stint of NRL footy, although not quite as delightful as Whangarei's Dylan Brown who is 20-years-old and is still the best running and defensive half in the NRL for Parramatta Eels. This was on full display in Brown's return to footy as he had 13 runs and 1 missed tackle, while Mitchell Moses had 7 runs and 6 missed tackles; Cameron Munster missed 5 tackles and Jahrome Hughes missed 3 tackles for Storm in that game.

When I head over to Fox Sports Lab, Brown is 4th in total tackles for 'Five-Eighths' with 413 tackles although Ben Hunt, Kurt Mann, Cameron Smith and Wade Graham are have more tackles as they primarily play in the forwards - couple games at Five-Eighth puts in this category. Under the 'Halfback' category, three players have more than Brown's 413 tackles and they Hunt, Mitchell Pearce and Kyle Flanangan and they have all missed more than Brown's 26 missed tackles. All up, that means that Brown is top-three for total tackles for NRL halves and he's missed the fewest.

As far as running the footy goes, Brown's 140 runs have him behind Graham, Mann and Munster with Munster being the only regular Five-Eighth in that group. No Halfback has more than 125 runs, meaning that Brown is only second to Munster as far as running the footy goes across all NRL halves. Take that a bit further and Brown averages 10.67m/run while Munster averages 9m/run, plus Brown has made 413 tackles with 26 misses vs Munster's 314 tackles with 42 misses. A lot of Rabbitohs attention will be on Moses and Clinton Gutherson, slowing their play-making abilities down. That makes it even more enticing to play close attention to Brown and his impact on a massive Finals game of footy for both teams.

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