1 week Ago By Greg Prichard
THIS is a banana-skin game if ever I've seen one for Canberra against Parramatta in Darwin on Saturday night. or signup to continue reading A team comprising mostly young players, coming off a miracle win in the final play against Cronulla last weekend? That sort of excitement is a lot to keep a lid on. It can be distracting going into the next round.
Fortunately, have a vastly experienced coach in . Hopefully, that ensures their focus is where it should be this week. And the Eels are an extremely unpredictable opponent.
They've endured a horror start to the new era under coach Jason Ryles, and made a bizarre selection decision on . Ryles named Lomax in his team on Tuesday afternoon, but then the Eels sent an email to members on Wednesday morning saying their marquee recruit had been ruled out for six weeks with a foot injury. It puts Lomax - who has clearly been the Eels' best player this year - in a race against the clock to be fit for NSW State of Origin duties, and it leaves a really big hole in Parramatta's team.
Lomax has been carrying the side, despite all the focus on Dylan Brown and his impending big-money move to Newcastle. And Parramatta is still without star playmaker Mitchell Moses. But what sort of selection mind games were the Eels trying to play with the latest injury? If they wanted the Raiders to think Lomax was playing, surely they would've left it until closer to the Saturday-night kick-off before revealing the injury news.
The way it played out, what was the point in naming him on Tuesday at all? Funny game, rugby league. Stuart is backing the same team that beat the Sharks to do a job in Darwin, but selection discussions can't be easy in the capital. The Raiders have been up and down this year - world beaters one fortnight and then struggling the next.
The good news for Canberra fans this week is that the season has followed a pattern - two wins in a row, two losses in a row. So if that continues, it'll be another win for the Green Machine in Darwin. ONE of the biggest mistakes a club can make is to sign a player another club simply didn't want.
Even worse if the club that let him go wasn't going great themselves. St George Illawarra made that . It looked like they had made a mistake when they signed him from South Sydney and now it has been playing out that way in the early rounds of the competition.
Sometimes, a club in the position the Dragons were in, with veteran halfback Ben Hunt having left to join Brisbane, face a desperate situation and let that affect their decision-making. Other times, they think they're the ones who can turn the player in question's career around and get the best out of him. I'm thinking it was a bit of both in the Dragons' case.
The Dragons could easily have a 3-1 record instead of being 1-3. They've butchered two games and one of their major failings has been Ilias's struggle with game management. Right now, he's playing for his NRL career and it's going to be fascinating to see how he fares in Friday night's game against Gold Coast at WIN Stadium.
THERE is a chance or Wests Tigers will make the finals this year, but there is no way both teams will be there. That is a luxury the NRL simply isn't going to provide. Not when there are so many teams vying to fill places in the bottom half of the top eight and most have better credentials than either the Knights or the Tigers.
At least after five rounds, which is not a big sample size but still gives you some insight into how things are likely to pan out. The rest will become a lot clearer after a more appropriate sample size of, say, 10 rounds, which is what makes games like the one between Newcastle and Tigers at McDonald Jones Stadium on Sunday so important. The of the season, but have lost the next two.
They had a bye in round four as well. After three rounds the Tigers had a win-loss record of 2-1, but they've lost their last two. The Knights with a 2-2 record and the Tigers 2-3 and each team trying to get back on track.
So what have you got, Knights? And you, Tigers? What can you show us in a very important game? What are you going to do to convince your fans you're the team out of these two that will make a real run at playing finals football. I'm not saying the loser will be a dead duck as far as their chances of playing finals footy is concerned, but it would add significantly to the degree of difficulty. Last weekend, both teams were provided with compelling evidence of what it takes to be not just a top-eight team, but a top-four team.
The Tigers led Brisbane 12-6 three minutes before halftime at Suncorp Stadium, but by five minutes into the second half they were down 26-12 and went on to lose 46-24. You can't stop concentrating and lose intensity against this Broncos outfit, but that's what a team that's still learning how to maintain the rage for 80 minutes inevitably does. It was a tight first half at Accor Stadium, but in the second half the Bulldogs systematically took the Knights apart to turn a 2-0 halftime lead into a 20-0 win.
This will already be the second time this season the Knights and Tigers have met. The Knights came from behind to narrowly win the first clash in the opening round. The Tigers could easily have a 4-1 record instead of 2-3, because they simply didn't know how to finish the Knights off in that game and then the same thing happened to them in round four against the Warriors.
After a successful recruitment drive they've got a hard core of players with recent finals experience - including several with premiership-winning experience - for other clubs, but it's Newcastle who have recent finals experience as a club. The Knights, who have scored at an NRL-worst average of just 10.5 points per game this season, need to become more productive to take some pressure off a defence that has so far clearly been the best part of their game.
The Tigers can score points, but they need to develop a killer instinct in a hurry or they're going to be a team that doesn't live up to their potential and finishes the season on the outside looking in at the finals for the 14th year in a row. Advertisement Sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date. We care about the protection of your data.
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