Welcome to Round 11

What a fantastic round we had last week! To top it off 5 of our boys were chosen to represent their State for the State of Origin games. Well done to Jamie Buhrer, Brett Stewart, Glenn Stewart and Tony Williams for being selected as part of the NSW team and our beloved Daly Cherry-Evans was called upon as 18^th man for QLD – we won’t hold that against him!

As happy and proud as I am for those team members, it does mean that a large chunk of our usual starting team is going to be missing for this Sunday’s clash against the Sydney Roosters. Fortunately we will see DCE on the field and the big news is that Kieran Foran will be back in the number 6 jersey after 6 weeks on the sideline due to a hamstring injury. Anthony ‘Choc’ Watmough was unfortunate to not be chosen, but aren’t we grateful that he will be part of the team on Sunday. Even though there is a large chunk – almost ¼ - out this week, we are fortunate to have great depth and many of the regular ‘work-horses’ will still be around and will be looking to get their fourth victory in a row.

There is some doubt about David ‘Wolfman’ Williams after a possible hamstring injury last week – according to twitter. That is yet to be confirmed by the Manly Sea Eagles and I am curious to see who might come in to take his position. Dean Whare will be playing fullback in the absence of Brett Stewart, so it won’t be him. Possibly, maybe Michael Oldfield? He has filled in on a number of occasions on the wing, although I have no knowledge of his current form or match fitness. I’m also hoping to see another appearance from Liam Foran, I think he did our team proud in the absence of his younger brother and I am interested to see if he might get more of a chance to play in the NRL in a different role.

So, our competition? Well the Roosters have done almost the exact opposite of us in this last month, we have won 3 out of 4 of our last matches and they have lost 3 out of the 4. They are also missing halfback Mitchell Pearce to origin, but other than that their lineup remains relatively the same. So who do I think will win? Well, while we are missing many of our key players, we see the return of Foran, and we are almost used to missing key players. However, our track record while we were missing those players isn’t so crash hot! I am confident we can beat the Roosters, but it depends on how they pull together without their playmaker. It could very well be another close game, a grinder as they’ve been calling them lately.

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